When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.A basal portion of NASA’s Artemis 2 Space Launch System rocket is seen inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. | Credit: NASA via XThe first crewed moon mission in more than 50 years remains on track to launch as soon as Feb. 6.NASA announced on Friday evening (Jan. 9) that it plans to roll the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft that will fly the Artemis 2 moon mission out to the pad for prelaunch checks on Jan. 17, weather and technical readiness permitting.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe agency’s specialized Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle will carry the SLS-Orion stack from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to Launch Pad 39B, a 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) trek that could take up to 12 hours.”We are moving closer to Artemis 2, with rollout just around the corner,” Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said in a statement on Friday.”We have important steps remaining on our path to launch, and crew safety will remain our top priority at every turn as we near humanity’s return to the moon,” she added.Artemis 2 will send four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — on a 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThough it won’t land on, or enter orbit around, Earth’s nearest neighbor, Artemis 2 will mark humanity’s first trip to lunar realms since Apollo 17 in December 1972.After the Artemis 2 stack reaches Pad 39B, technicians will subject the rocket and capsule to a variety of tests and checkouts. Chief among them is a fueling test known as a wet dress rehearsal.”During wet dress, teams demonstrate the ability to load more than 700,000 gallons [2.65 million liters] of cryogenic propellants into the rocket, conduct a launch countdown, and practice …
