{"id":310230,"date":"2026-02-21T18:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/310230\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T18:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:12:16","slug":"nasa-sets-date-for-first-crewed-moon-flyby-in-50-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/310230\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA sets date for first crewed Moon flyby in 50 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA has set 6 March as the earliest possible launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed flyby mission to the Moon in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

Lori Glaze, a senior official with the US space agency, cautioned that pad work, a flight readiness review and a dress rehearsal analysis needed to be completed in order to meet that date.<\/p>\n

“We need to successfully navigate all of those but assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position to target 6 March,” Ms Glaze said.<\/p>\n

NASA rehearsed the launch of its massive SLS rocket yesterday.<\/p>\n

\"
\nArtemis II’s four-person crew will fly the Orion spacecraft<\/p>\n

Technical problems in early February cut short an earlier so-called wet dress rehearsal of the launch of the Artemis II mission.<\/p>\n

However yesterday, the US space agency reported that things proceeded as planned, concluding at “T-29 seconds” in the countdown.<\/p>\n

The wet dress rehearsal is conducted under real conditions – with full rocket tanks and technical checks – at Cape Canaveral in Florida, with engineers practicing the manoeuvres needed to carry out an actual launch.<\/p>\n

The setback in February, which included a liquid hydrogen leak, dashed hopes of a lift-off this month.<\/p>\n

Three American astronauts and one Canadian make up the Artemis II crew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA has set 6 March as the earliest possible launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed flyby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-310230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}