NASA Announces the Anticipated Artemis II Moon Mission Has Been Delayed

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that the Artemis II moon mission has been delayed following issues that were detected during the wet dress rehearsal. The anticipated launch date was previously pegged as "no later than April 2026," and the revised launch window remains consistent with that timeframe.

Although the earliest launch date was previously hoped to be in early February, NASA officials have made revisions to those ambitious expectations.

Below, we report on the latest news concerning the issues that were discovered during the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal, as well as what this means going forward for the crew's expected launch window.

Continue reading to learn all about the concerns that arose during the wet dress rehearsal, as well as when you can expect to observe the historic lunar mission launch.

According to a Feb. 3 blog post update following the agency's wet dress rehearsal preceding the Artemis II launch, several challenges reportedly occurred during the two-day test.

"The wet dress rehearsal was a prelaunch test to fuel the rocket, designed to identify any issues and resolve them before attempting a launch," according to the NASA blog post.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the launch window has been extended into March.

"We are moving off the February launch window and targeting March for the earliest possible launch of Artemis II," Isaacman wrote on X. "With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges. That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success."

A liquid hydrogen leak has made the headlines as the most prominent and easiest to understand of the problems that occurred during the wet dress rehearsal. Additional issues include "a valve associated with Orion crew module hatch pressurization [which] required retorquing, and closeout operations took longer than planned," per the NASA blog post.

Nevertheless, Isaacman appeared undeterred by the issues that arose and wrote that another wet dress rehearsal would occur before the launch.

"I want to thank the talented workforce at NASA, along with our industry and international partners, who are working tirelessly on this effort," Isaacman wrote on his X account. "The team will fully review the data, troubleshoot each issue encountered during WDR, make the necessary repairs, and return to testing. We expect to conduct an additional wet dress rehearsal and then target the March window."

Having been in quarantine since Jan. 21, the Artemis II crew will now be released. The astronauts will reenter quarantine roughly two weeks prior to the launch, per the blog post.

"This is just the beginning," Isaacman wrote. "It marks the start of an Artemis program that will evolve to support repeated and affordable missions to the Moon, in line with President Trump’s national space policy. Getting this mission right means returning to the Moon to stay and a future to Artemis 100 and beyond."