LOS ANGELES, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has postponed the wet dress rehearsal and launch timeline for its Artemis II crewed mission to the Moon due to cold weather, the agency said Friday.
The wet dress rehearsal had been scheduled for late January. NASA said engineers have closely monitored conditions in recent days as cold temperatures and strong winds moved through Florida. Managers assessed hardware readiness against forecast conditions amid a rare Arctic outbreak affecting the state and decided to adjust the mission timeline.
NASA is now targeting Feb. 2 for the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With the revised schedule, the earliest possible launch opportunity would be no earlier than Feb. 8. The agency said it will continue to evaluate weather conditions ahead of the rehearsal.
The wet dress rehearsal is a key prelaunch test during which teams fuel the rocket and conduct a full launch countdown. According to NASA, the test demonstrates the ability to load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants into the rocket and safely remove them without astronauts aboard the spacecraft.
The four-member Artemis II crew is made up of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The crew remains in quarantine in Houston.
The Artemis II mission will send the four astronauts on an approximately 10-day journey around the Moon and back, marking another major step toward future U.S. crewed missions to the lunar surface. ■