{"id":290898,"date":"2026-02-19T02:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T02:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290898\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T02:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T02:19:09","slug":"nasa-starts-countdown-clock-for-second-artemis-ii-wet-dress-rehearsal-after-rocky-first-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290898\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA starts countdown clock for second Artemis II wet dress rehearsal after rocky first attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA<\/a> is set to fuel the Artemis II rocket once more for a “wet dress rehearsal” on Thursday (Feb. 19) in preparation for its historic launch to the moon.<\/p>\n

The fueling test will be NASA’s second try at a wet dress rehearsal to fuel its Space Launch System<\/a> (SLS) rocket after hydrogen leaks<\/a> plagued the first attempt earlier this month.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first wet dress rehearsal, which took place on the night of Feb. 2, was scrubbed with roughly 5 minutes left on the countdown clock, after NASA finished fueling and was closing in on a simulated launch<\/a>. The ground launch sequencer (a software program that automates command and control procedures) halted the countdown because of a spike in the liquid hydrogen leak rate.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

NASA traced the issue to two seals surrounding the fuelling lines, which have since been fixed. Yet the headaches continued following the premature ending<\/a> of a Feb. 12 “confidence test” due to another problem that reduced the fuel flow to the rocket. NASA said in a statement<\/a> that its engineers have replaced a filter that was suspected of disrupting hydrogen flow.<\/p>\n

“Considering the issues observed during the lead-up to Artemis I, and the long duration between missions, we should not be surprised there are challenges entering the Artemis II campaign,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman<\/a> wrote on the social platform X<\/a> on Saturday (Feb. 14). “That does not excuse the situation, but we understand it. I am impressed with the NASA team and our contractors working diligently through the campaign.”<\/p>\n

A historic mission<\/p>\n

Artemis II is scheduled to take four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon. This is the first time NASA is sending humans back to the moon in more than 50 years, and the first time that a woman and a Black man will be part of a lunar crew. If the trip is a success, then NASA will have tested systems and gathered data ahead of the Artemis III mission, which aims to land astronauts on the moon in 2028.<\/p>\n

NASA wants to establish a long-term presence on the moon through the Artemis Program, eventually using the lunar surface as a stepping stone to Mars. However, spaceflight is a difficult and delicate process, and that’s been repeatedly shown during the Artemis Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Get the world\u2019s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Hydrogen fuelling remains a key issue. The lightest element has been NASA’s fuel of choice since the Apollo program,<\/a> but it’s also notorious for leaking \u2014 passing through solid metals by diffusing through their atomic lattices. To complicate matters further, hydrogen has a boiling point of minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 253 Celsius, or 20 kelvins), so NASA has to keep it extremely cold, at temperatures that can then freeze seals.<\/p>\n

In 2022, NASA’s flagship Space Launch System (SLS) rocket returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building<\/a> twice due to hydrogen leaks and other technical issues that arose during rehearsals for Artemis I, an uncrewed flight around the moon that eventually took off<\/a> in November 2022. NASA is now experiencing similar problems with Artemis II.<\/p>\n

NASA had already reported some other issues during the first rehearsal, including audio communications dropouts, problems with a replaced valve on the crew capsule and another hydrogen leak, which was blamed on cold weather<\/a> and resolved by engineers warming up some components.<\/p>\n

To pass the wet dress rehearsal on Thursday, NASA will have to demonstrate its ability to safely fuel more than 700,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) of its hydrogen-based cryogenic propellant and complete a simulated launch. This will include closing hatches on the Orion spacecraft, which the Artemis II crew will ride in on their trip to the moon.<\/p>\n

Once NASA has a successful wet dress rehearsal, the space agency can proceed to a flight-readiness review before committing to a launch date for Artemis II. The March launch windows<\/a> include March 6 to 9 and March 11. If Artemis II doesn’t fly on one of those days, it will be delayed until April, with the mission meant to launch no later than April 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA is set to fuel the Artemis II rocket once more for a “wet dress rehearsal” on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-290898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}