When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.NASA completed the wet dress rehearsal for its Artemis 2 moon rocket on Feb. 19, 2026. | Credit: NASANASA’s second attempt to fuel up its Artemis 2 moon rocket appeared to go well on Thursday (Feb. 19), potentially keeping the mission on track to launch as soon as early March.The space agency wrapped up the Artemis 2 wet dress rehearsal (WDR) — a two-day-long practice run of the operations leading up to launch — on Thursday night (Feb. 19) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe Artemis 2 team notched a number of important milestones during the test, chief among them the successful fueling of the mission’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.The WDR is designed to put Artemis 2’s SLS, Orion capsule, ground equipment and mission teams through their paces, ensuring that everything is ready for an actual liftoff.That launch will send four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth. Artemis 2 will be the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo missions ended in 1972, as well as the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program.The lone previous Artemis mission, Artemis 1, successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022. That flight was delayed multiple times by leaks of liquid hydrogen (LH2) propellant during ground testing, and it looked like Artemis 2 might be heading down a similar path.AdvertisementAdvertisementNASA cut short Artemis 2’s first WDR on Feb. 2 after detecting an LH2 leak, which emanated from an interface with the tail service mast, a part of the SLS’ mobile launch tower that supplies fuel and other resources to the rocket via lines known as umbilicals. The Artemis 1 leak came from this same trouble spot.The Artemis 2 team replaced two seals in the area after the first WDR attempt, then partially filled the rocket’s tanks on Feb. 12 to test the fix. The seals held then, and they held on Thursday: Team members successfully filled SLS’ two stages with 730,0 …
