WASHINGTON: NASA began a critical two-day-long test of its giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket complete with a simulated countdown, as the agency gears up to return humans to the Moon.
Known as the “wet dress rehearsal,” it is the final major test before the Artemis-1 mission this summer: an uncrewed lunar flight that will eventually be followed by boots on the ground, likely no sooner than 2026.
“The countdown is now underway,” NASA said in its Artemis blog at 5:00 pm Eastern Time (2100 GMT), confirming members of the launch control team had been issued their “call to stations.”
Data from the test, which ends Sunday mid-afternoon, will be used to finalize a launch date for Artemis 1. NASA had said May could be the first window, but later now seems likely.
It is called a “wet” dress rehearsal because supercooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen will be loaded into SLS from ground systems, just as they would be in a real launch.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket — expected to be the most powerful in history at the time it is operational — was rolled out to Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida around two weeks ago.
