{"id":488256,"date":"2026-02-20T19:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488256\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T19:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:12:08","slug":"nasa-pushes-forward-with-a-possible-artemis-2-march-launch-with-caveats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488256\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA pushes forward with a possible Artemis 2 March launch with caveats"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA is happy<\/a> with the just concluded second wet dress rehearsal, so much so that they are proceeding with a possible March launch attempt believing the seal repair has worked.<\/p>\n

NASA replaced two seals<\/a>\u00a0around two fuelling lines on the the\u00a0tail service mast umbilical\u00a0on the mobile launcher NASA and proceeded to conduct a \u201cconfidence test\u201d on Feb. 12 followed by yesterday\u2019s successful wet dress rehearsal.<\/p>\n

We learned today a new issue came up during the \u201cconfidence test.\u201d Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch\u00a0director discussed the an issue with a filter on the mobile launcher. Blackwell-Thompson said, \u201cwe saw a delta p across that filter that we didn\u2019t expect, and it was right around the time that we were transitioning to fast fill. So what we were left with was, did we have something that was clogged in the filter? Was the filter frozen? What caused that? And so we went in, and we had to wait a couple of days for it to warm up, get it up to the right temperatures, because the last thing you want to do in a cryo system is introduce moisture and and so we went in, pull that filter out, what we found was that it wasn\u2019t clogged. So we were left with there\u2019s no debris in it and and so it was likely some air that got ingested into the system somewhere, and it froze as part of those operations. So we purchased it out, put in a brand new filter, and continued our purges, and again, had really good performance yesterday. We would have no plan to go in and touch that again.\u201d Based on Blackwell-Thompson\u2019s response it seems that issue has been resolved.<\/p>\n

\"NASA\u2019sNASA\u2019s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft stand vertical on mobile launcher 1 at Launch Complex 39B at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. Credit: NASA\/Ben Smegelsky<\/p>\n

Earlier in the press conference Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate discussed where thing stand now.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday, we were able to fully tank the SLS rocket within the planned timeline. We demonstrated our crew module close out activities with the Closeout Crew again on the timeline. And we also successfully demonstrated the launch countdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glaze emphasized that while things look good and that they were targeting March 6 as the earliest launch attempt. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt. I am going to caveat that. I want to be open, transparent with all of you that there is still pending work.\u201d<\/p>\n

That work includes \u201cout at the pad\u201d, data review of the wet dress rehearsal, and \u201ca multi day flight readiness review that will come up later next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cwe need to successfully navigate all of those. But assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position to target the March 6.\u201d<\/p>\n

The launch opportunity<\/a> on March 6, 2026 has a launch window open for 120 minutes that opens at 8:29 p.m. EST. Other launch windows<\/a> in March are on the 7, 8, 9, and 11th. <\/p>\n

As for the crew, they watched part of the wet dress rehearsal yesterday and will go into a soft quarantine starting at Johnson Space Center in Houston later today. Then as the launch nears and they will head to Kennedy Space Center to continue the quarantine.<\/p>\n

During his comments on the seals, John Honeycutt, chair, Artemis II Mission Management Team, said \u201cI will tell you right now I got, I got a pretty high level of confidence in the configuration that we\u2019re in right now. It\u2019s out there at the pad. It\u2019s going to be there at the pad until we go fly. Very little influences can go on to change the configuration we\u2019re in right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA said there will also be one more pad closeout demo. And although Glaze said they were targeting March 6 that came with caveats, all indications at this point are that we may very well see a launch attempt on March 6.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA is happy with the just concluded second wet dress rehearsal, so much so that they are proceeding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[58777,58760,49,48,52877,105501,6294,307,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-488256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-artemis-ii","9":"tag-artemis-program","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-canadian-space-agency","13":"tag-jeremy-hansen","14":"tag-moon","15":"tag-nasa","16":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}