After successful WDR, Artemis II is on the schedule

Last night, at the conclusion of the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for the Artemis II mission, they completed the critical last four minutes until the vehicle's control software terminated the count for the second time and the vehicle correctly aborted the launch. That's almost two sequential WDRs in one day.

This is a massive success, far better than the prior attempt at the WDR, and senior managers had enough confidence to move forward with plans to launch four astronauts around the Moon. The mission is currently on the Next Spaceflight schedule for two weeks from tonight, Friday, March 6 at 8:29 PM EST, 0129 UTC. The top level NASA administrator on the mission credited the success to the fixes carried out after that Feb. 2nd attempt.

“For the most part, those fixes all performed pretty well yesterday,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s exploration programs. “We were able to fully fuel the SLS rocket within the planned timeline.”
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“We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt,” Glaze said. “I am going to caveat that. I want to be open, transparent with all of you that there is still pending work. There’s work, a lot of forward work, that remains.”

This is probably a good place to repeat a graphic shown before, which shows the five or six days available per month after accounting for the position of the Moon in its orbit, the flight’s trajectory, and the various thermal and lighting constraints.

It's important to realize that despite the fact that they might have just had the most successful WDR of every (all both) SLS mission, I don't think we can automatically conclude that the new seals will work in two weeks. Teflon seals can be fussy. Fickle. They worked better than any other set of seals in every other test, and it would be nice to be able to count on them, but I'm not sure we can assume they're perfect. There are no plans to go in and replace them again before launch. If they fail on March 6, maybe they can be replaced to try again before the 11th.

Meanwhile, the Artemis II astronauts, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, with mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, entered NASA’s standard two-week-long preflight medical quarantine on Friday at their home base in Houston.

NASA's Space Launch System with the America 250 logos on the SRBs on Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky