NASA hopes to get its moon megarocket off the ground as soon as late August.
NASA is working towards three “placeholder” launch dates for Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight around the moon that serves as a keystone in testing for future human missions: August 29, September 2 and September 5. These dates are pending repairs and tweaks, however, to the Space Launch System rocket and related systems in light of results from a “wet dress rehearsal” June 20 that NASA declared a success, officials said in a teleconference with media held on Wednesday (July 20).
“It’s not an agency commitment,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator of exploration systems, said of the interim launch dates. NASA will announce a more firm commitment about one week before the launch, he said, when the agency completes its standard flight readiness review of the Artemis 1 stack, including SLS and the Orion capsule riding atop the rocket.
