{"id":339251,"date":"2026-03-20T14:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/339251\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T14:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:18:07","slug":"nasa-artemis-ii-rocket-heads-to-pad-for-second-launch-attempt-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/339251\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Artemis II rocket heads to pad for second launch attempt this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

By&nbspRoselyne Min<\/a>&nbspwith&nbspAP<\/p>\n

\n Published on
\n 20\/03\/2026 – 14:29 GMT+1\n <\/p>\n

For the second time this year, NASA moved its Moon rocket from the hangar out toward the pad Friday in hopes of launching four astronauts on a lunar fly-around next month.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

The 98-meter rocket began the slow 6.4-kilometre trek in the middle of the night, transported atop a massive crawler used since the 1960s Apollo era. It was expected to take 12 hours. The trip was held up for several hours by high winds.<\/p>\n

If the latest repairs work and everything else goes NASA’s way, the Space Launch System could blast off as early as April 1 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre. The Artemis II crew went into quarantine this week in Houston.<\/p>\n

The three Americans and one Canadian will zip around the moon in their capsule and then come straight home without stopping. <\/p>\n

The Artemis II crew should have blasted off on a lunar flyaround earlier this year, but fuel leaks and other problems with the Space Launch System rocket interfered<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although NASA managed to plug the hydrogen fuel leaks at the pad in February, a helium-flow issue forced the space agency to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building<\/a> for repairs, bumping the mission to April.<\/p>\n

The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was during Apollo 17 in 1972. The new Artemis program aims for a two-person landing in 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By&nbspRoselyne Min&nbspwith&nbspAP Published on 20\/03\/2026 – 14:29 GMT+1 For the second time this year, NASA moved its Moon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[44880,17614,8036,3323,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-339251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-artemis-i","tag-european-space-agency","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339251","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=339251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}