The Artemis II astronauts flew to the Kennedy Space Center Friday to prepare for the scheduled April 1 launch that will take them on a nearly 700,000-mile voyage around the moon and back, the first crew to leave Earth orbit since the final Apollo mission a half century ago.Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen made the trip to Florida from the Johnson Space Center in Houston aboard sleek T-38 jets, setting down on the spaceport’s three-mile-long runway around 2:10 p.m. Eastern Time.The Artemis II crew, fielding questions from reporters at the Kennedy Space Center runway on March 27, 2026, after arriving to make final preparations for launch. Left to right: Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover. Koch, Wiseman and Glover are NASA space veterans while Hansen will be making his first flight. / Credit: NASA(NASA)”Hey, let’s go to the moon!” exclaimed Wiseman, pumping his fists on the runway. “I think the nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again. And on behalf of myself, Victor, Christina, Jeremy, we are really pumped to go do this for this entire team.AdvertisementAdvertisement”It has been a lot of work. It’s been a great journey. It’s great to be down here in the Florida. The vehicle looked amazing on the pad on the way in…It’s just been an awesome start to this journey here at Kennedy.”Countdown clocks are expected to begin ticking at 4:44 p.m. EDT Monday, setting up a launch attempt at 6:24 p.m. Wednesday, the opening of a two-hour window.The crew originally hoped to blast off in early February but the flight was delayed, first by hydrogen leaks detected during a fueling test, and then by problems pressurizing the rocket’s upper stage propulsion system.That problem could not be fixed at the launch pad, forcing engineers to haul the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket back to NASA’s cavernous Veh …
