Overview
- NASA says Artemis II is on track for an April 1 launch after the SLS rocket and Orion passed a Flight Readiness Review, with backup windows on April 2–6 and April 30.
- The SLS–Orion stack, which completed an overnight roll to Pad 39B on March 19–20, is now in final pad checkouts.
- The four astronauts entered a 14-day quarantine on March 18 to reduce infection risk, a policy the Canadian Space Agency’s flight surgeon linked to typical 10–14 day incubation periods.
- A February attempt was called off when teams found a helium leak in ground systems, and engineers report the issue has been fixed after repairs in the Vehicle Assembly Building.
- NASA outlined a roughly 10-day flight that starts with high-Earth orbit checkouts, includes a lunar flyby to test Orion’s life-support and manual controls, and ends with splashdown off San Diego.