When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.The astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station. . | Credit: NASAIt is the best of times, and it is (far from, actually,) the worst of time for NASA, with two big astronaut launches converging toward the same week, as a rare Arctic cold front pushes mission schedules into a logistical whirlwind.It’s a tale of NASA’s highest-profile mission in more than half a century — the Artemis 2 astronaut flight around the moon — brushing up against the launch of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). That liftoff has been accelerated up teh calendar to replace the Crew-11 astronauts, who were forced back to Earth early due to an undisclosed medical issue with one of the astronauts.AdvertisementAdvertisementIt’s a great problem for NASA to have — schedule conflicts from the number of astronaut missions launching to space — and indicative of the progress the agency has made to return human spaceflight to American soil. But the overlap with unusually frigid temperatures afflicting Florida’s Space Coast and the rest of the country have turned Crew-12’s launch opportunities into an intricate dance around Artemis 2.As of Friday afternoon (Jan. 30), NASA and SpaceX are targeting Feb. 11 as the earliest opportunity for the launch of Crew-12, with liftoff that day scheduled for 6:00 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40), at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.The wet dress rehearsal for Artemis 2 — a critical prelaunch fueling test of the mission’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket — is currently scheduled to take place from Saturday evening (Jan. 31) through Monday (Feb. 2), and the outcome of that two-day-long test will have an impact on both missions’ timelines.”The timing in between missions sort of depends a little bit as to what happens [with the wet dress rehearsal],” NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said during a press conference on Friday.AdvertisementAdvertisementEssentially, Crew-12 is at the mercy of Artemis 2, which is scheduled to launch as early as Feb. 8, with a window that closes a short five hours before Crew-12’s instantaneous 6:00 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) launch opportunity on Feb. 11.Stich described several scenarios for Artemis 2, and what each meant for Crew-12’s ability to launch to the space station. “If Artemis were to … have a great wet dress, proceed into their FRR (flight readiness review) and launch on the 8th … we would defer all the way to the 19th,” Stich explained.Artemis 2 will fly NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day mission around the moon and back aboard the Orion spacecraft. It’s the first crewed mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, and one demanding much of NASA’s focus and resources.There are a lot of things to “deconflict,” Stich said. With astronaut launches, NASA utilizes military vessels stationed at sea across various points around the planet, where crew capsules can land and be recovered in the event of an emergency-abort situation. Those assets are shared between Crew-12 and Artemis 2.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhere the astronauts suit up for flight is another overlap for the two missions. “We tend to use the full suit-up room in the O&C (operations and checkout facility) where the crew stays,” Stich said. Crew-12, he added, has the “option to go use SpaceX’s suit-up room … at pad 39A.”If SLS makes it through wet dress rehearsal smoothly, attempts to launch on Feb. 8, but is forced to stand down, that would push Crew-12 back to Feb. 13. In fact, possible weather delays notwithstanding, the only way for Crew-12 to attempt a …
