The Nasa team said they were not going to attempt another so-called “wet dress rehearsal” once the rocket had been rolled out to the launchpad. <\/p>\n
This is a pre-launch test where the rocket is filled with fuel and taken through the countdown sequence.<\/p>\n
“There’s not a lot more to be gained from that,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. <\/p>\n
“The next time we tank the vehicle will be when we’re attempting to launch.”<\/p>\n
She added there was still work to do before Nasa confirmed a launch date.<\/p>\n
“I am comfortable and the agency is comfortable with targeting April 1 as our first opportunity, just keep in mind we still have work to go,” said Glaze.<\/p>\n
“There are still things that need to be done within the Vehicle Assembly Building and out at the pad, and as always, we’ll always be guided by what the hardware is telling us, and we will launch when we’re ready.”<\/p>\n
Nasa is under pressure to launch the Artemis II mission.<\/p>\n
It has already been delayed by two years after problems were found with the heat shield on the first Artemis mission, which saw the Space Launch System and Orion capsule fly to the Moon without any people onboard.<\/p>\n
In December 2024, the space agency set a deadline to launch Artemis II before the end of April 2026. <\/p>\n
“At this point, we’re very focused on April,” said Glaze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nasa team said they were not going to attempt another so-called “wet dress rehearsal” once the rocket…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-472325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}