NASA plans to haul its Artemis II moon rocket back out to its seaside launch pad next week to ready the huge booster for blastoff as early as April 1 on a delayed-but-historic flight to send four astronauts on a nine-day trip around the moon, the agency announced Thursday.At the conclusion of a two-day flight readiness review, “all the teams polled ‘go’ to launch and fly Artemis II around the moon, pending completion of some of the work before we roll out to the launch pad,” said Lori Glaze, associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters.”Just a reminder to everybody, we talk about it every time we talk about this flight, it’s a test flight, and it is not without risk. But our team and our hardware are ready.”A file photo of the Space Launch System rocket inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. / Credit: NASA/Frank MichauxBased on the ever-changing positions of the moon and Earth, along with a complex mix of mission objectives, NASA must launch Artemis II by April 6, or the flight will slip another month or so. For an April 1 launch, liftoff is expected at 6:24 p.m. EDT, followed by splashdown in the Pacific Ocean nine days later.AdvertisementAdvertisementNASA workers had hoped to launch the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion crew capsule and its four passengers — Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — in early February.But the long-awaited flight was delayed by hydrogen fuel leaks and, more recently, by problems with the rocket’s upper stage propellant pressurization system.The hydrogen leaks were fixed at the launch pad by replacing suspect seals in the umbilical system that attaches fuel lines to the base of the rocket. But engineers could not access the upper stage at the launch pad, and the entire rocket Hawaii’s K …
