NASA to roll out SLS rocket Saturday for Artemis II moon mission

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — During the early morning hours of Saturday, NASA will begin the Artemis II’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s slow roll to the launch pad.

The SLS is a super-heavy rocket that is 322 feet tall (98.27 meters), making it 17 feet (5.18 meters) taller than the Statue of Liberty, according to NASA.

To put it into perspective for space lovers:

At 7 a.m. ET., the SLS rocket and Orion capsule will take a ride on a crawler transporter as it begins its slow 4-mile ground journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

And yes, it will be a slow trip, moving at 1 mile per hour or less. Between unscheduled stops and other factors, it could take between six and 12 hours before it arrives at the launch pad — its home until the planned February 2026 launch. 

Once it arrives at its temporary home, it will have its wet dress rehearsal, which is scheduled to take place at the end of January.

The purpose of the wet dress rehearsal is to test each phase of the launch countdown, from loading more than 700,000 gallons of super-cold fuel into the rocket to safely standing down from a liftoff attempt.  

And that fuel isn’t something you can find at your local gas station.

“The liquid oxygen tank and liquid hydrogen tank hold a combined 733,000 gallons of propellant super cooled to minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit to power the four RS-25 engines at the bottom of the rocket,” NASA explained.

Sitting on top of the SLS rocket is the Orion capsule, which will carry its human crew to their 10-day mission to the moon.

It will send NASA’s Cmdr. Gregory Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut mission specialist Jeremy Hansen to the moon, the first time humans visited the rocky satellite since 1972.

This will be a flyby mission, as seen in this NASA graphic for Artemis II.

NASA is aiming for a Feb. 6 launch, but it can be pushed back to April. The U.S. space agency explained why.

“While the Artemis II launch window opens as early as Friday, Feb. 6, the mission management team will assess flight readiness after the wet dress rehearsal across the spacecraft, launch infrastructure, and the crew and operations teams before selecting a launch date,” NASA stated.

As John Honeycutt, NASA’s Artemis II mission management team chair, said during a Friday afternoon press conference, “We will fly when we are ready.”

The U.S. space agency has named the mission to return to Earth’s lunar neighbor Artemis, as a homage to the Apollo moon landing. In Greek mythology, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the moon.

NASA plans to send humans (including the first woman and person of color) back to the moon in 2027, more than 50 years after the last time humans stepped on the lunar surface.

The Artemis I launch took place in 2022 to test out the new systems and how they would handle going to the moon and back.

Learn about the crew