Under 6 days to Artemis II

With all relevant disclaimers about how well preparations go and no big changes, we are under 6 days until the Artemis II mission to loop around the moon, sending an astronaut crew farther from Earth than any group of people since Apollo 17 - the last Apollo mission. Thanks to a website apparently created for just such questions, this was the time to the "T zero" of 6:24PM EDT on Wednesday, April 1st.Counting from the time at the bottom of this screen capture.

At the risk of being too boring, you know that this is going to be the first crewed mission of the Artemis/Orion capsule, and that there has only been one test flight of the fully stacked Artemis SLS system, in November 2022. 

Each Artemis mission is going to cost in the vicinity of $4 Billion and both the first and second missions were delayed repeatedly with problems fueling the system, leaking fuel and other problems with the system. I prefer to think that when we're launching a rocket that's not only the same basic design as previous vehicles but that's literally using parts that flew on previous programs, that everything should go smoother than a system that's new to everyone who gets near it. Artemis II had a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) in February and failed it, requiring the system be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to be repaired. It then passed the WDR and another problem surfaced the day after they declared success. That led to a second rollback to the VAB. 

NASA has said it won't perform another WDR, which means there are fewer boxes to check during this second stint at the pad. Still, a launch on April 1 is far from guaranteed. NASA will undoubtedly err on the side of caution, given that this is a crewed mission. The stakes are higher. If it doesn't launch during the period between April 1 and 6, there's another window opening April 30th. They haven't posted any summaries of the windows starting from May and through the summer.