NASA’s repaired Artemis II moon rocket began a glacial 12-hour trip back to the launch pad early Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, setting the stage for a delayed April 1 launch to send four astronauts on a historic nine-day flight around the moon and back.Mounted atop a powerful Apollo-era crawler-transporter, the 332-foot-tall Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and its mobile launch platform began inching out of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building around 12:20 a.m. EDT, nearly four-and-a-half hours late because of high winds along Florida’s Space Coast.NASA’s Artemis II Space Launch System moon rocket headed for launch pad 39B early Friday, slowly inching its way out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center atop an Apollo-era crawler-transporter. It was expected to take 12 hours to move the giant rocket the four miles to the launch pad, kicking off final preparations to ready the ship for a delayed launch to the moon on April 1. / Credit: Spaceflight NowThe 4-mile trip to Launch Pad 39B was expected to be complete by around noon or shortly thereafter. At that point, NASA and contractor engineers and technicians planned to begin work to connect fuel lines, power and data cables, and to rig the pad for launch amid a battery of tests to verify good connections and healthy components.AdvertisementAdvertisementNASA managers say earlier problems and repairs that required a follow-on fueling test have been resolved and that the next time the SLS rocket is loaded with more than 750,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants, it will be for takeoff.Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen went into pre-flight medical quarantine Wednesday night. They plan to fly to the Kennedy Space Center a week from Friday, and if all goes well, they hope to strap in for blastoff at 6:24 p.m. April 1, the opening of a two-hour launch window.The flight will mark the first time astronauts have flown atop an SLS rocket and aboard an Orion crew capsule after a single unpiloted test flight in 2022.In that flight, the Orion crew capsule was not equipped with a life support system. The Artemis II astronauts will devote their first full day in space to checking out the spacecraft’s propul …
