It looks like a March launch is no longer in the cards for Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed trip to the moon’s vicinity since the final Apollo mission over 50 years ago. While preparations were underway at the Kennedy Space Center for a launch as soon as March 6, the space agency says it ran into an issue with the flow of helium to its SLS rocket’s upper stage this weekend and it now has to roll the rocket from the launch pad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to figure out what’s wrong and fix it. A media briefing is planned for sometime this week to discuss the problem and what’s next.
But in a post on X, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed the rollback will “take the March launch window out of consideration.” NASA noted on its blog that the current effort “potentially preserves the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks.” It’s a four-mile trip back to the VAB that will take hours to carefully transport the massive rocket and the Orion spacecraft. NASA says it’s eyeing February 24 for this trek.
The issue occurred overnight in the early hours of February 21, when NASA says it observed “interrupted flow of helium to the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage.” The space agency explained:
The upper stage uses helium to maintain the proper environmental conditions for the stage’s engine and to pressurize liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant tanks. The systems worked during NASA’s Artemis II wet dress rehearsals, but teams were not able to properly flow helium during normal operations and reconfigurations following the wet dress rehearsal that concluded Feb. 19. Operators are using a backup method to maintain the environmental conditions for the upper stage engines and the rocket, which remains in a safe configuration.
The Artemis II crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Mission Specialist — had just entered quarantine a day before the issue arose. NASA says the astronauts have since come out of quarantine.
At the start of this year, NASA announced an accelerated timeline for Artemis II, which was previously set for April 2026 after experiencing delays in 2024. For this 10-day mission, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS rocket, the Artemis II astronauts will take a trip around the moon in the Orion spacecraft. While it initially targeted early February, the launch was pushed to March due to issues that popped up during the wet dress rehearsal. Now, we’re back to the beginning with a possible April launch, but that’ll depend on the fix being a quick one.
NASA is preparing to remove its massive moon rocket from its launchpad to fix a technical issue, delaying the agency’s much-anticipated mission to send a crew of four around the moon.
On Saturday, NASA announced that it planned to roll back the rocket, the Boeing-built Space Launch System, to its hangar at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to fix a problem found in the upper portion of the vehicle. NASA engineers found an interruption in the flow of helium — which is needed for launch — in the rocket.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the work needed to fix the problem could only be done at the giant Vehicle Assembly Building hangar at KSC. He also noted that a similar helium issue had cropped up on the SLS’s first flight back in 2022.
“I understand people are disappointed by this development,” Isaacman wrote in a statement on X. “That disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor.”
The setback comes just a day after the agency announced it was targeting a March 6 launch for the lunar mission called Artemis II, which will send people around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Isaacman said the launch will not take place in March now, with April being the earliest next launch opportunity.
On Thursday, NASA conducted an elaborate dress rehearsal with the rocket, where engineers filled the vehicle with propellant and simulated many of the steps that will take place on launch day. The agency had set the March launch date after that exercise seemed to go smoothly.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA aims to send astronauts to the moon in March after acing the latest rocket fueling test.
Administrator Jared Isaacman says launch teams made “major progress” between the first countdown rehearsal that was disrupted by hydrogen leaks earlier this month and the second test that was completed without significant seepage Thursday night.
NASA could launch four astronauts on the Artemis II mission as soon as March 6.
To keep their options open, the three Americans and one Canadian plan to go into a two-week health quarantine Friday night.
“I am just thrilled to be here as a part of NASA’s
[astronaut candidate] class,” Menon said. “Really, what these first couple years
entail is all the foundational training.
“And, after that, they will start assigning us to specific missions.”
Menon said she is learning about space walking, how to fly
jets and the International Space Station [ISS].
WRAL News asked Menon how she trains to walk in space.
“There are a lot of great tools that NASA has developed over
the years to train for space walks,”
Menon said. “One of them involves a giant pool here at Johnson Space Center [in
Houston] called the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.”
Menon said she can practice the steps of an entire space
walking operation, which can take up to six hours. She has been to outer space
before as part of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn, which was a five-day private mission
that launched on Sept. 10, 2024. Menon was one of four crew members.
WRAL News asked Menon if her children want to follow in her
footsteps.
“We’re really excited to support them and what they’re
curious about,” Menon said. “My son currently wants to be a paleontologist and my
daughter currently wants to have five different jobs at the same time.”
Other NC astronauts
Zena Cardman is a graduate of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He just got back from a mission to the ISS.
Christina Koch is an NC State graduate who is scheduled to
travel in March to the moon.
A recent test to confirm repairs to the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s fueling system faced problems of its own, casting doubt over NASA’s ability to fix a recurring issue ahead of the Artemis 2 launch window in March.
NASA recently performed a confidence test on newly replaced seals in an area used to load SLS with propellant. During the test, however, operators only partially filled the rocket’s core stage liquid hydrogen tank before encountering an issue with ground support equipment, the agency said in a statement.
The issue somehow reduced the flow of liquid hydrogen into the rocket. “Engineers will purge the line over the weekend to ensure proper environmental conditions and inspect the ground support equipment before replacing a filter suspected to be the cause of the reduced flow,” NASA wrote.
Leaky rockets
The latest confidence test, which the agency hadn’t announced in advance, was meant to address a hydrogen leak on the SLS rocket.
NASA engineers first detected the leak on February 3 during a wet dress rehearsal for Artemis 2. SLS was loaded with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to simulate the launch countdown for the mission. The fueling test was cut short when engineers discovered the issue in one of the tail service mast umbilicals on the mobile launcher. The 35-foot-tall (11-meter-tall) structures provide cryogenic propellant lines and electrical cable connections to the SLS core stage.
In an attempt to resolve the issue, technicians had replaced two seals inside the tail service masts. Although the confidence test of the new seals was only partially successful, NASA teams “were able to gain confidence in several key objectives of the test, and data was obtained at the core stage interfaces, taken at the same time in the test where they encountered a leak during the previous wet dress rehearsal,” the space agency wrote.
At the time, NASA’s ground teams resolved the issue by changing how the liquid hydrogen was loaded into the rocket’s core stage. The same loading procedure was used for the Artemis 2 wet dress rehearsal, but it didn’t pan out this time.
“Considering the issues observed during the lead-up to Artemis I, and the long duration between missions, we should not be surprised there are challenges entering the Artemis II campaign,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X. “That does not excuse the situation, but we understand it.”
There is a lot riding on Artemis 2, the first crewed mission to the Moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972. “There is still a great deal of work ahead to prepare for this historic mission,” Isaacman added. “We will not launch unless we are ready and the safety of our astronauts will remain the highest priority.”
A bombshell report by Ars Technica’s Eric Berger has revealed exactly how Blue Origin plans to beat SpaceX to a crewed Moon landing. Internal documents obtained by Ars reportedly detail the accelerated mission architecture Blue Origin will use to attempt to land astronauts on the Moon without the highly complex orbital refueling SpaceX’s approach requires.
Gizmodo could not independently verify the contents of the documents Ars reviewed, and Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.
The rivalry ramps up
Before we dive into Blue Origin’s new lunar strategy, a bit of context. On Sunday, Musk sent shockwaves through the spaceflight community by announcing that SpaceX—a company built on its founder’s dream of colonizing Mars—has pivoted toward building a Moon city instead.
The move marks a seismic shift in the company’s strategic vision. After all, it was only a year ago that Musk called the Moon a “distraction,” insisting that SpaceX is “going straight to Mars.” Still, it’s not altogether surprising, as Musk’s company is currently at risk of losing its Artemis 3 lunar lander contract to Blue Origin.
The morning after Musk announced SpaceX’s Moon pivot, Bezos posted an ominous photo of a turtle peering out from the shadows (this is relevant—promise). As Berger insightfully points out, the image—unccompanied by text—is almost certainly a nod to Blue Origin’s mascot: a tortoise. Bezos has previously explained that the tortoise is a reference to “The Tortoise and the Hare,” one of Aesop’s Fables.
It appears that in his eyes, Blue is the tortoise that will beat SpaceX—the hare—to a crewed lunar landing through slow and steady development.
NASA’s Artemis 3 mission will be the first to return humans to the Moon since the Apollo era. In 2021, the agency contracted SpaceX to build a crew lander for the mission, called the Starship Human Landing System (HLS). NASA originally hoped the lander would be ready in time to launch Artemis 3 by 2024, but significant developmental delayspushed the mission back to 2028 and prompted the agency to reopen the contract in October.
Since then, Blue has emerged as SpaceX’s competitor for the Artemis 3 lander contract. Bezos’s company is actively prepping its Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) cargo lander for its first test flight, slated to launch this year. Its success would pave the way for the MK2 crew lander, and if that vehicle is ready to fly before the Starship HLS, Musk can kiss his Artemis 3 contract goodbye.
Blue Origin’s new plan
Here’s how Blue Origin plans to pull this off. The documents reviewed by Ars reportedly detail two missions: an uncrewed demo mission and a crewed demo landing.
Berger reports that the uncrewed flight will require three launches of Blue’s New Glenn rocket. The first two will put two “transfer stages” (specialized upper stages designed to move a vehicle from one orbit to another) into low-Earth orbit, and the third will put a smaller version of the MK2 lander, called “Blue Moon MK2-IL,” into orbit. These three vehicles will dock to each other and the first transfer stage will boost them into an elliptical orbit around Earth.
The first stage will then separate and fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. That’s when the second transfer stage will take over, boosting the MK2-IL lander into an elliptical orbit around the Moon. The lander will then separate, descend to the lunar surface, and ascend back into low-lunar orbit.
The crewed landing will require four New Glenn launches, three to put three transfer stages into LEO and a fourth to launch MK2-IL and a docking port. All four vehicles will dock to the port. The first transfer stage will boost the stack into an elliptical Earth orbit, and the second will push it to rendezvous with NASA’s Orion spacecraft—carrying a crew of astronauts—in a specialized, highly stable orbit around the Moon.
Orion will dock with MK2-IL to allow the crew to board. The third transfer stage will then move MK2-IL into a low-lunar orbit and separate, allowing the lander to descend to the lunar surface and then ascend to re-rendezvous with Orion.
Sounds easy enough, right? Not quite. While this approach will not require orbital refueling, Blue Origin still must prove it can pull off complex dockings and deep-space maneuvers it has never attempted before, as Berger notes. So while Blue Origin is aiming for an uncrewed Moon landing later this year—potentially ahead of SpaceX’s 2027 target—both companies remain far from the finish line.
Hydrogen leaks delay Artemis II moon mission until March – CBS News
Watch CBS News
NASA announced the long-awaited flight to send four astronauts on a trip around the moon was being delayed to March after a test launch ran into a variety of problems and ultimately was called off. Mark Strassmann reports.
NASA’s first crewed moon mission in more than 50 years has been delayed until March at the earliest. During a routine dress rehearsal of the launch, persistent liquid hydrogen leaks were discovered in the Artemis II rocket. CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood breaks it down.
NASA’s Artemis II moon launch delayed after technical issues during rehearsal
MINUTES. SANIKA ALL RIGHT. SLOWLY BUT SURELY. THAWING OUT HERE. CAM. WELL, LET’S TALK ABOUT A MAJOR SETBACK FOR NASA IN THE QUEST TO GO BACK TO THE MOON. THESE ARE LIVE PICTURES FROM PAT 39, WHERE THE ARTEMIS TWO MISSION WILL REMAIN GROUNDED FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER MONTH. WE BROKE THE NEWS ON SUNRISE AFTER NASA CHIEF JARED ISAACMAN MADE THE ANNOUNCEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA OVERNIGHT. AS WE REPORTED YESTERDAY, CREWS WERE WORKING THROUGH A NUMBER OF ISSUES DURING DRESS REHEARSAL, BUT WE’LL NOW NEED MORE TIME TO FIX THE ROCKET IN ORDER TO LAUNCH WESH TWO. MEGHAN MORIARTY IS LIVE AT KSC, WHERE NASA IS EXPECTED TO GIVE US AN UPDATE IN LESS THAN AN HOUR NOW. MEGHAN, ALL EYES ON THIS. AT 1:00, NASA MISSION SPECIALISTS ARE EXPECTED TO BREAK DOWN WHAT HAPPENED DURING WET DRESS REHEARSAL. THE CHALLENGES THAT THEY HAD THERE, AS WELL AS WHAT’S NEXT FOR ARTEMIS TWO. NOW THAT WET DRESS REHEARSAL, WE HAVE BEEN EXPLAINING IT TO YOU FOR DAYS, BUT JUST A REMINDER, IT’S THAT CRITICAL TEST THAT IS A SIMULATED LAUNCH AND PRACTICE COUNTDOWN AHEAD OF THE REAL DEAL. AND IT’S DESIGNED TO IDENTIFY PROBLEMS GIVING NASA A CHANCE TO FIX THINGS BEFORE THE LAUNCH, WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY WHAT WE’RE DOING HERE. NASA SAYS THEY PUSHED THROUGH SEVERAL CHALLENGES DURING THE TWO DAY TEST THAT STARTED MONDAY AND WENT INTO THIS MORNING, ADDING THAT THEY MET MANY OF THE PLANNED OBJECTIVES. BUT TEAMS DID ACTUALLY DETECT THAT HYDROGEN LEAK PRETTY EARLY INTO FUELING. THEY DID PUSH THROUGH, BUT ULTIMATELY DETERMINED THAT IT WAS GOING TO BE TOO BIG OF A RISK TO CONTINUE. NOW, HYDROGEN LEAKS, THOUGH THEY’RE NOT UNCOMMON. WELL, IT SHOWS THEY’RE IN A VERY PRECARIOUS SITUATION. HYDROGEN IS INSIDIOUS. IT’S THE SMALLEST MOLECULE. IT CAN EASILY LEAK. THIS CAUSED MANY ISSUES DURING THE ARTEMIS ONE COUNTDOWN. ARTEMIS ONE WAS THAT UNCREWED TEST FLIGHT IN 2022, AND IT ALSO SUFFERED SUFFERED HYDROGEN LEAKS DURING TESTING, WHICH DELAYED ITS LAUNCH DATE. NOW, WHILE TEAMS DETECTED THAT LEAK EARLY ENOUGH, THEY ALWAYS EXPECT A SMALL AMOUNT OF HYDROGEN THAT WILL BE RELEASED DURING THIS PROCESS, ESCAPING SOME OF THOSE SEALS. BECAUSE IT’S SUCH A SMALL MOLECULE. HOWEVER, AS THEY WENT THROUGH THAT TESTING, THEY REALIZED THAT IT WOULD EXCEED NASA’S SAFETY LIMIT. SO NOW THEY’RE TARGETING A LAUNCH IN MARCH. AGAIN, THAT NEWS CONFERENCE IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN AT 1:00. WE’LL NOT ONLY BE STREAMING IT ON WESH.COM, BUT WE WILL BRING YOU THE UPDATES STARTING ON WESH 2 NEW
NASA’s Artemis II moon launch delayed after technical issues during rehearsal
NASA’s Artemis II mission has been postponed to March following technical issues identified during a wet dress rehearsal. The mission was originally scheduled for launch this Sunday, Feb. 8. During the rehearsal on Monday, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a liquid hydrogen leak, according to NASA.The head of NASA, Jared Isaacman, announced on X around 2 a.m. that hydrogen leaks had been discovered during fueling of the tank. Beyond the liquid hydrogen leak, teams encountered several additional issues, including:A recently replaced valve for the Orion crew module hatch pressurization system required retorquing.Closeout operations took longer than planned.Cold weather affected several cameras and other equipment.Intermittent audio communication dropouts occurred across ground teams.A research chemist monitoring the process at the space center said NASA will need to figure out what was going wrong. NASA explained that the launch was mainly delayed to allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal. While the new launch window is set for March, there is no specific launch date yet.NASA held a news conference Tuesday at 1 p.m. to discuss the issues and the upcoming launch further.Watch the full conference below:
NASA’s Artemis II mission has been postponed to March following technical issues identified during a wet dress rehearsal.
The mission was originally scheduled for launch this Sunday, Feb. 8.
During the rehearsal on Monday, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a liquid hydrogen leak, according to NASA.
The head of NASA, Jared Isaacman, announced on X around 2 a.m. that hydrogen leaks had been discovered during fueling of the tank.
Beyond the liquid hydrogen leak, teams encountered several additional issues, including:
A recently replaced valve for the Orion crew module hatch pressurization system required retorquing.
Closeout operations took longer than planned.
Cold weather affected several cameras and other equipment.
Intermittent audio communication dropouts occurred across ground teams.
A research chemist monitoring the process at the space center said NASA will need to figure out what was going wrong.
NASA explained that the launch was mainly delayed to allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal.
While the new launch window is set for March, there is no specific launch date yet.
NASA held a news conference Tuesday at 1 p.m. to discuss the issues and the upcoming launch further.
After working around a hydrogen leak, NASA pressed ahead with a “wet dress” rehearsal countdown of its Artemis II moon rocket Monday, loading the huge rocket with more than 750,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel, only to be derailed by additional leakage early Tuesday.
Already running several hours behind schedule, the countdown resumed at the T-minus 10-minute mark around 12:09 a.m. EST Tuesday, ticking down toward a simulated engine start.
But four-and-a-half minutes later, the countdown stopped again due to a “liquid hydrogen leak at the interface of the tail service mast umbilical, which had experienced high concentrations of liquid hydrogen earlier in the countdown,” NASA said on social media.
The Space Launch System rocket’s mobile launch platform is equipped with two tail service masts, large side-by-side structures at the base of rocket that house propellant lines leading to pull-away umbilical assemblies on a side of the booster’s engine compartment.
“The launch control team is working to ensure the SLS rocket is in a safe configuration and (to) begin draining its tanks,” NASA said.
Whether mission managers will be able to clear the rocket for launch as early as Sunday to propel four astronauts on a flight to the moon will depend on the results of a detailed overnight review and post-test analysis. But NASA only has three days — Feb. 8, 10 and 11 — to get the mission off this month or the flight will slip to March.
Hydrogen leaks have proven extremely difficult to repair at the launch pad, and a Super Bowl Sunday launch appears unlikely unless managers conclude the leak is manageable as is. But no final decisions on a path forward are expected until engineers have a chance to review the data. A news briefing is expected at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The practice countdown began Saturday evening — two days late because of frigid weather along Florida’s Space Coast and, after a meeting Monday morning to assess the weather and the team’s readiness to proceed, Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson cleared engineers to begin the remotely-controlled fueling operation.
The test got underway about 45 minutes later than planned but initially appeared to be proceeding smoothly as supercold liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel were pumped into the Space Launch System rocket’s first stage tanks. Shortly after, hydrogen began flowing into the rocket’s upper stage as planned.
But after the first stage hydrogen tank was about 55 percent full, a leak was detected at an umbilical plate where a fuel line from the launch pad is connected to the base of the SLS rocket’s first stage. After a brief pause, engineers resumed fuel flow but again cut it off with the tank about 77 percent full.
After more discussion, they decided to press ahead on the assumption the leak would decrease once the tank was full and in a replenishment mode when flow rates were reduced. And that turned out to be the case.
“NASA teams have completed filling the core stage of the SLS rocket with liquid hydrogen,” NASA said in a brief web update at 4:45 p.m. “Engineers continue to watch the leak at the interface of the tail service mast umbilical, but the liquid hydrogen concentration in the umbilical remains within acceptable limits.”
The countdown was timed for a simulated launch at 9 p.m. EST, but the test ran longer than originally planned. As of 9:55 p.m., the countdown was in an extended hold at the T-minus 10-minute mark. The count finally resumed just after midnight, only to be stopped a final time at T-minus five minutes and 15 seconds.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket stands atop pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center on night of Feb. 2, 2026.
NASA
The SLS is the rocket NASA plans to use to send Artemis astronauts to the moon aboard Orion crew capsules. It is the most powerful operational launcher in the world, a towering 332-foot-tall rocket powered by two strap-on solid fuel boosters and four main engines burning liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel that generate 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are hoping to launch atop the SLS rocket as early as Sunday night for a nine-day two-hour flight around the moon and back. They planned to fly to Florida Tuesday to begin final preparations, but that will depend on the results of the countdown review.
The SLS rocket’s first and so far only mission came in 2022, when it was launched on an unpiloted test flight. In the campaign leading up to launch, engineers ran into a variety of problems ranging from fuel leaks to unexpected propellant flow behavior in the launch pad’s plumbing. Launch was delayed for months while engineers worked to resolve the problems.
For the rocket’s second launch, multiple upgrades and improvements were implemented and Blackwell-Thompson said she was optimistic the fueling test would go well.
“Why do we think that we’ll be successful? It’s the lessons that we learned,” she said last week.
“Artemis I was the test flight, and we learned a lot during that campaign, getting to launch,” she said. “And the things that we learned relative to how to go load this vehicle, how to load LOX (liquid oxygen), how to load hydrogen, have all been rolled in to the way in which we intend to load the Artemis II vehicle.”
Most of the fixes and upgrades appeared to work as planned. But leakage at the tail service mast umbilical, a problem during the first Artemis flight in 2022, cropped up again the second time around.
First, calls grow for an independent probe into Minneapolis shootings. Then, NASA’s journey to the far side of the moon. And, the Amsterdam improv club behind comedy legends.
This month, NASA aims to launch four astronauts around the far side of the moon. The Artemis II mission will be NASA’s first human mission to the moon in over 50 years. Bill Whitaker reports, Sunday.
Since 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover has achieved a number of historic milestones, including sending back the first audio recordings from Mars. Now, nearly five years after landing on the Red Planet, it just achieved another feat. This past December, Perseverance successfully completed a route through a section of the Jezero crater plotted by Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, marking the first time NASA has used a large language model to pilot the car-sized robot.
Between December 8 and 10, Perseverance drove approximately 400 meters (about 437 yards) through a field of rocks on the Martian surface mapped out by Claude. As you might imagine, using an AI model to plot a course for Perseverance wasn’t as simple as inputting a single prompt.
As NASA explains, routing Perseverance is no easy task, even for a human. “Every rover drive needs to be carefully planned, lest the machine slide, tip, spin its wheels, or get beached,” NASA said. “So ever since the rover landed, its human operators have painstakingly laid out waypoints — they call it a ‘breadcrumb trail’ — for it to follow, using a combination of images taken from space and the rover’s onboard cameras.”
To get Claude to complete the task, NASA had to first provide Claude Code, Anthropic’s programming agent, with the “years” of contextual data from the rover before the model could begin writing a route for Perseverance. Claude then went about the mapping process methodically, stringing together waypoints from ten-meter segments it would later critique and iterate on.
This being NASA we’re talking about, engineers from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made sure to double check the model’s work before sending it to Perseverance. The JPL team ran Claude’s waypoints through a simulation they use every day to confirm the accuracy of commands sent to the rover. In the end, NASA says it only had to make “minor changes” to Claude’s route, with one tweak coming as a result of the fact the team had access to ground-level images Claude hadn’t seen in its planning process.
“The engineers estimate that using Claude in this way will cut the route-planning time in half, and make the journeys more consistent,” NASA said. “Less time spent doing tedious manual planning — and less time spent training — allows the rover’s operators to fit in even more drives, collect even more scientific data, and do even more analysis. It means, in short, that we’ll learn much more about Mars.”
While the productivity gains offered by AI are often overstated, in the case of NASA, any tool that could allow its scientists to be more efficient is sure to be welcome. Over the summer, the agency lost about 4,000 employees – accounting for about 20 percent of its workforce – due to Trump administration cuts. Going into 2026, the president had proposed gutting the agency’s science budget by nearly half before Congress ultimately rejected that plan in early January. Still, even with its funding preserved just below 2025 levels, the agency has a tough road ahead. It’s being asked to return to the Moon with less than half the workforce it had during the height of the Apollo program.
For Anthropic, meanwhile, this is a major feat. You may recall last spring Claude couldn’t even beat Pokémon Red. In less than a year, the company’s models have gone from struggling to navigate a simple 8-bit Game Boy game to successfully plotting a course for a rover on a distant planet. NASA is excited about the possibility of future collaborations, saying “autonomous AI systems could help probes explore ever more distant parts of the solar system.”
NASA is preparing to move forward with a key milestone as it readies the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission.
A “wet dress rehearsal” allows launch teams to practice fueling and countdown procedures under conditions that closely mirror launch day, much like a full dress rehearsal before a Broadway opening.
The process begins with the multi-hour task of fully fueling the rocket with its flight propellants. Teams load more than 700,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the SLS tanks while monitoring vehicle systems and validating ground procedures.
Artemis I wet dress rehearsal
Once fueling is complete, teams conduct a simulated countdown that runs to just short of liftoff. The rehearsal includes all planned holds, allowing controllers to practice stopping and restarting the countdown as they would on launch day.
The most visible members of the Artemis II team, however, will not take part in the wet dress rehearsal.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are currently in a 14-day quarantine. The precaution helps ensure they do not contract an illness that could delay the mission.
Kennedy Space Center Crew Quarters where astronauts spend 14-days ahead of launch in quarantine.
During quarantine, the crew is staying in the spartan but functional Astronaut Crew Quarters inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center. Think of the cleanest one-star hotel you have ever stayed in.
The facility, which dates back to the Apollo era, includes a kitchen, lounge, and bedrooms for the astronauts, as well as medical exam rooms and the suit room where crews don their pressure suits before heading to the launch pad.
Results from the wet dress rehearsal will help mission managers assess overall system readiness and make final decisions about a specific launch date, which could be as early as February 6 at 9:41 p.m. EST.
After months of meticulous preparation, NASA’s 32-story-tall Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful operational booster in the world, was hauled to its seaside launch pad Saturday in Florida, setting the stage for a long-awaited flight next month to send four astronauts on a trip around the moon.
The 5.7-million-pound rocket, carried by an upgraded Apollo-era crawler-transporter tipping the scales at some six million pounds, began the trip to pad 39B just after 7 a.m. local time, creeping out of NASA‘s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at a top speed of just under 1 mile per hour.
The Space Launch System rocket, with NASA’s Orion crew capsule perched on top, was hauled out of the huge Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center early Saturday for a 4-mile trip to launch pad 39B. If all goes well, NASA plans to launch the rocket in early February to send four astronauts on a trip around the moon and back.
William Harwood/CBS News
Hundreds of space center workers, family members and guests gathered near the VAB and along the crawlerway to take in the sight, posing for selfies and enjoying a chilly Saturday morning as the towering moon rocket slowly rolled past.
New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and the Artemis II astronauts — Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — were also on hand to witness the milestone.
“Wow. LETS GO!!!” Wiseman posted on the social media platform X with a photo of the SLS rocket moving out of the VAB. In another post, he called the SLS and its Orion crew capsule “engineering art.”
Generating some 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the SLS is the most powerful rocket ever operated by NASA, including the agency’s legendary Saturn 5 moon rocket. It has a little more than half the thrust of SpaceX’s Super Heavy-Starship rocket, but after a successful unpiloted test flight in 2022 — Artemis I — NASA deemed it safe enough to put astronauts aboard.
The SpaceX rocket is still in the test phase, and it’s not known when it might make its first flight with people on board.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and the Artemis II crew take questions from reporters during the SLS rollout to the launch pad. Left to right: NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens, Isaacman, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman.
NASA
The Artemis II crew plans to blast off in early February to test drive their Orion crew capsule in Earth orbit before heading into deep space on a flight around the moon that will carry them farther from Earth than any astronauts have ever ventured. In the process, they will get a chance to observe the far side of the moon in some detail.
“I think one of the most magical things for me in this experience is when I looked out a few mornings ago, there was a beautiful crescent (moon) in the morning sunrise, and I truly just see the far side,” Wiseman told reporters during the SLS rollout. “It was a waning crescent here, so it’s a waxing gibbous on the far side.”
He added: “And you just think about all the landmarks we’ve been studying on that far side, and how amazing that will look, and seeing Earth rise, those sorts of things, just flipping the moon over and seeing it from the other perspective is what I think when I look out (at the moon) right now.”
The trip to launch pad 39B took about eight hours, kicking off a busy few weeks of tightly scripted tests and checkouts before a critical fueling test around Feb. 2 when nearly 800,000 gallons of super cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen will be pumped aboard for a “wet” dress rehearsal countdown.
“One of the first things that happens after we get to the pad, we get connected … all the validations, getting tied back to the firing room, getting ready to power up the individual elements,” said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. “We will get into our crew module work (and) we’re going to power everything up.”
Blackwell-Thompson added: “We have incrementally tested all of this offline or in the integrated environment of the VAB and now it’s just getting out to the pad and testing those pad interfaces. … Wet dress is the big test at the pad. That’s the one to keep an eye on, I guess, that’s the driver to launch.”
The Artemis II Space Launch System rocket reached the top of pad 39B after a 4-mile trip from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building that took about eight hours to complete. NASA hopes to launch the rocket in early February to send four astronauts on a flight around the moon.
CBS News
The maiden flight of the SLS rocket in 2022 was delayed multiple times by propellant loading problems and persistent hydrogen leaks. For the rocket’s second flight, NASA and its contractor team have implemented multiple upgrades and procedural changes to minimize or eliminate any such problems the second time around.
“Artemis I was a test flight, and we learned a lot during that campaign getting to launch,” said Blackwell-Thompson. “And the things that we learned relative to how to go load this vehicle, how to load (liquid oxygen), how to load hydrogen, have all been rolled into the way in which we intend to load the Artemis II vehicle.”
Because of the relative positions of the Earth and moon, along with the trajectory NASA plans to use for Artemis II, the agency only has five launch opportunities in February: Feb. 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11. Because rollout came a few days later than planned, pushing the fueling test into early February, it would appear only the final three opportunities are still available.
But a leak-free fueling test, in the absence of any other major issues, will clear the way for a launch attempt on one or two of those days. If not, the next set of launch windows opens in March.
A wild card in the mission planning is the launch of a fresh crew to the International Space Station to replace four crew members who returned to Earth ahead of schedule Thursday because of a medical issue affecting one of the astronauts. That launch originally was scheduled for Feb. 15, but NASA managers are looking into moving it up by several days to minimize the gap between crews.
NASA flight controllers want to avoid flying two piloted spacecraft at the same time. If the space station crew replacement flight stays on track, or if problems are found during the SLS fueling test, agency managers might be forced to delay the Artemis II launch to the next set of opportunities in March.
But Isaacman is keeping NASA’s options open.
“We have, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress,” he said. “But look, that’s our first window, and if everything is tracking accordingly, I know the teams are prepared, I know this crew is prepared. We’ll take it.”
With a space station medical evacuation safely completed, NASA is focused on two challenging missions proceeding in parallel: launching four astronauts on a flight around the moon, at the same time as the agency is planning to send four replacement astronauts to the International Space Station.
Engineers plan to haul the Artemis 2 moon rocket to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday for tests leading to launch early next month on a historic piloted flight around the moon.
The Space Launch System moon rocket inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building where engineers are removing work platforms to clear the way for rollout to launch pad 39B on Saturday. Four astronauts in the Orion crew capsule at the top of the rocket plan to fly around the moon in early February.
NASA/Keegan Barber
At the same time, NASA is gearing up to launch four Crew 12 astronauts to the space station, possibly while the Artemis 2 moon mission is underway, to replace four Crew 11 crew members who cut their mission short and returned to Earth ahead of schedule Thursday because of a medical issue.
The Artemis 2 mission and Crew 12’s planned space station flight present a unique challenge for NASA. The agency has not managed two piloted spacecraft at the same time since a pair of two-man Gemini capsules tested rendezvous procedures in low-Earth orbit in 1965. The agency has never flown a deep space mission amid another launch to Earth orbit.
“This is exactly what we should be doing at NASA,” Jared Isaacman, NASA’s new administrator, said Thursday. “We have the means as an agency … to be able to bring our astronauts home at any time … while making preparations to pull forward our next mission, like Crew 12, while also progressing on our Artemis 2 campaign.”
He described the moon mission as “probably one of the most important human spaceflight missions in the last half century.”
The world’s most powerful rocket booster
NASA’s towering 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful operational booster in the world, will be hauled out of the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building early Saturday atop an upgraded Apollo-era crawler transporter. Including at least one stop along the way, the 4-mile move to the pad is expected to take eight to 10 hours.
“It takes us a little while to get out of the building,” said Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. “But about an hour after we get that first motion, you’ll begin to see that beautiful vehicle cross over the threshold of the VAB and come outside for the world to have a look.”
Once at the pad, engineers will carry out a variety of tests and work to ready the rocket and its Orion crew capsule for blastoff early next month on the Artemis 2 moon mission.
“It really doesn’t get much better than this,” John Honeycutt, chairman of the Artemis 2 Mission Management Team, told reporters Friday. “We’re making history.”
Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen planned to be on hand for the rollout. If all goes well, the crew will test the Orion capsule in Earth orbit before heading into deep space, flying farther from home than any other humans as they loop around the far side of the moon.
Artemis 2 mission plan
The Artemis 2 mission follows a similar flight in 2022 that sent an unpiloted Orion capsule around the moon to pave the way for next month’s flight. The Artemis 2 mission, in turn, will set the stage for Artemis 3, a long-awaited and oft-delayed mission to land astronauts near the moon’s south pole. The current target date for Artemis 3 is 2028.
Despite Saturday’s planned rollout, the Artemis 2 launch date is still uncertain.
It will depend in large part on the results of a fueling test around the first of the month when engineers plan to load the booster’s 21-story-tall first stage with 733,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen along with a full load of propellants for the booster’s 45-foot-tall second stage, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS.
The Artemis 2 crew (left to right): commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
NASA/Frank Michaux
During tests of the SLS rocket used for the Artemis 1 mission in 2022, multiple fueling tests had to be carried out before engineers finally resolved a series of propellant leaks. The SLS rolling out on Saturday features multiple upgrades and improvements to minimize or eliminate any such leakage.
If the upcoming fueling test goes well, Wiseman and his crewmates could be cleared to blast off a few days before Feb. 11, the end of next month’s launch period. If any major problems are found during the propellant loading exercise, Artemis 2 likely will slip to early March when the next set of launch windows becomes available.
Next space station crew
Amid the work to ready the Artemis 2 rocket for launch, NASA managers are also working to move up the launch of the Crew 12 space station crew. Commander Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev are officially scheduled for launch on Feb. 15.
The crew they are replacing, Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, originally expected to return to Earth around Feb. 20 after helping familiarize their replacements with the intricacies of space station operation.
Four space station crewmates returned to Earth Thursday after their mission was cut short due to a medical issue. The Crew 11 crew members are seen here shortly after splashdown, before they left their Crew Dragon capsule (left to right): cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, mission commander Zena Cardman and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui. (NASA)
NASA/Bill Ingalls
But Crew 11 was ordered to cut their mission short after one of the crew members developed a medical issue of some sort. They returned to Earth Thursday, leaving just three people aboard the space station: cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams. They were launched to the outpost in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA and SpaceX are working to move up the Crew 12 launch date to minimize the gap between the two NASA missions. Depending on where it ends up, NASA could be orchestrating a launch to the International Space Station while the Artemis 2 crew is flying around the moon.
“I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t continue along those parallel paths,” Isaacman said. “And if it comes down to a point in time where we have to de-conflict between two human spaceflight missions, that is a very good problem to have at NASA.”
Jeff Radigan, lead flight director for Artemis 2, agreed it made sense to continue preparing for both missions.
“I know the agency is preparing to launch Crew 12,” he told reporters. “There are a lot of preparations going on, but there absolutely are constraints.”
“It’s not prudent for us to put both of those up at the same time, but we also have to ensure that both of them are ready to go. We may run into an issue, and the last thing we want to do is make a decision too early and then lose an opportunity. That would not be responsible of us.
“So, we need to keep pressing with both missions, we need to ensure that we’re doing that at the right speed, and we’re looking at the right technical constraints. As we get closer, either the decision will come about because the hardware’s talking to us and we have an issue that we have to go deal with, or we have to pick one.”
But, he added, “that doesn’t mean we should stop preparing for either mission right now, but we need to do that at the right pace.”
A Bay Area teenager has impressed NASA so much, the space agency decided to include him, and his work, on their official website.
The challenge was to ask people to use data from NASA telescopes for real world, and out of this world, applications.
Ahd-Vaid Sunny, a college student from Pleasanton, says he and his partners used AI to find and track exo-planets, which are planets that exist outside of our solar system.
NASA was so impressed with his work, it will include his findings on their website.
The agency also says it’s in talks to do more work with Sunny and his team.
“I’ve always been fascinated with space, exploring the unknown, when I first learned about the space shuttle in elementary school, I was just immediately obsessed with the whole idea,” Sunny said.
Scott Budman has more information in the video above.
After a medical issue prompted their evacuation, NASA’s Crew-11 astronauts safely splashed down off the coast of California in the predawn hours of Thursday morning. Their departure brought an early end to their mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), leaving the orbital laboratory temporarily understaffed.
On Monday, Crew-11 pilot Mike Fincke handed command of the space station over to Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. Fincke and his three crewmates then departed the ISS on Wednesday, leaving Kud-Sverchkov, his fellow cosmonaut Sergei Mikaev, and NASA’s Chris Williams as the station’s only remaining crew members.
Three is the minimum number of astronauts required to keep the ISS running. While it’s not inherently dangerous to run the ISS with a skeleton crew, it will certainly have an impact on day-to-day operations.
Reduced crew, reduced operations
The ISS has been continuously occupied for the past 25 years. For the first nine years of operations, the nominal crew size was only three. It has since increased to seven to maximize scientific research and operational efficiency—larger crews mean more hands to perform maintenance and laboratory tasks.
The ISS program is designed to maintain that level of continuous human presence, but missions don’t always go as planned, like in the case of Crew-11’s medical evacuation. The space station will now operate with a crew of three until the next team of astronauts, Crew-12, arrives in February.
In the meantime, Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev, and Williams will have to shift their focus toward essential maintenance and space station operations, with less time available for research. They will also refrain from conducting any spacewalks that are not absolutely necessary for safety, as it is nominal to have two crew members perform the EVA while another two provide support from inside the ISS.
Williams will also be managing the NASA segment of the ISS on his own while Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev oversee the Roscosmos side.
“Chris is trained to do every task that we would ask him to do on the vehicle,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said during a press conference on January 8. Kshatriya added that ground control teams and Williams’s Russian crewmates will also be available to assist him.
As long as Crew-12 launches on time, Williams, Kud-Sverchkov, and Mikaev will only be alone on the ISS for about a month. The three of them are expected to remain aboard the space station until the summer, completing an eight-month mission.
What’s next for Crew-11?
Now that the Crew-11 astronauts have returned, all four of them are likely undergoing routine medical evaluations so that they can begin the reconditioning process. Spending an extended period of time in low gravity results in muscular atrophy, bone density loss, and fluid shifts, which means ISS astronauts have to go through weeks of rehabilitation back on Earth.
The ailing astronaut whose condition prompted Crew-11’s evacuation will now receive diagnostic attention that wasn’t possible on the ISS. NASA has not disclosed which astronaut is affected, nor any specifics about their condition, but has repeatedly said they are stable.
This was the first time in the 25-year history of the ISS that NASA has had to perform a medical evacuation. The agency’s ability to bring Crew-11 home safely and expediently just goes to show that it is always prepared for the unexpected, as are the ISS astronauts. NASA officials have expressed utmost confidence in Williams, Kud-Sverchkov, and Mikaev’s ability to maintain the space station while they await Crew-12’s arrival.
Four space station fliers undocked and plunged back to Earth, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean early Thursday off the Southern California coast six days after NASA ordered them home early because of a medical issue.
Descending under four large parachutes, Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, co-pilot Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov landed in the Pacific off San Diego at 3:41 a.m. EST, closing out a 167-day stay in space.
SpaceX recovery crews reached the Crew Dragon capsule shortly after splashdown and hauled it aboard a company ship before opening its hatch and helping the returning station crew out of the spacecraft for initial medical checks.
SpaceX/NASA
“On behalf of SpaceX and NASA, welcome home, Crew 11,” a SpaceX flight controller radioed.
“It’s so good to be home, with deep gratitude to the teams that got us there and back,” Cardman replied.
SpaceX support crews stationed near the landing site quickly reached the gently bobbing spacecraft and hauled it aboard a company recovery ship where flight surgeons were standing by to carry out initial medical checks.
Astronaut Mike Fincke, completing his fourth spaceflight, is all smiles as recovery crews help him to a nearby stretcher, standard procedure for returning space station crews as they begin re-adjusting to gravity.
SpaceX/NASA
Under strict medical privacy guidelines, NASA has not identified the astronaut who had the medical issue in orbit or provided any details about its nature.
But the crew appeared healthy and in good spirts as they were helped out of the cramped capsule and onto waiting stretchers — normal procedure for returning station crews — smiling and waving as they began re-adjusting to gravity after five-and-a-half months in weightlessness.
Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, in obvious good spirits, smiles as she’s helped from the Crew Dragon capsule.
SpaceX/NASA
All four were expected to be flown to shore by helicopter for more extensive diagnostic evaluation at an unidentified area hospital.
“All four crew members will be transported to a local hospital for additional evaluation, taking advantage of medical resources on Earth to provide the best care possible,” NASA said in a blog post.
“Following a planned overnight hospital stay, the crew will return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will reunite with their families and undergo standard post-flight reconditioning and evaluations.”
Left behind in orbit were Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, who took over command of the space station from Fincke, and the cosmonaut’s two Soyuz MS-28 crewmates, Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams. They were launched last November for a planned eight-month stay in space.
Cardman and her crewmates, who launched to space on Aug. 1, 2025, were originally expected to return to Earth around Feb. 20 to wrap up a 202-day mission.
Crew 11 posed for a photo in the Japanese Kibo research module last week after checking out the pressure suits they will wear during reentry Thursday. Back row, left to right: Cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman. Front row, left to right: NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.
NASA
But last Wednesday, the day before a planned spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, one of the crew members experienced a medical issue of some sort and the next day, NASA managers decided the issue was serious enough to bring the crew home early for a more extensive diagnostic evaluation.
NASA’s chief medical officer said it was not an emergency return in any normal sense, but the decision marked the first time in NASA history that a spaceflight was cut short due to a medical concern.
None of the crew members mentioned the issue in the week between their initial request for a private medical conference and their return to Earth. In a final post on X Wednesday, Yui sent down pictures of Mount Fuji, saying “Hello! The day has finally arrived for our departure to Earth.”
“I haven’t had a chance to photograph daytime Japan recently, but at the very last moment, we passed over the Pacific side of Japan,” he said. “Mount Fuji bid us farewell, adorned with a touch of crimson makeup from the setting sun.”
A shot of Japan’s snow-covered Mount Fuji as photographed from the International Space Station by Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.
NASA
The space station is continuously staffed by a crew of seven: Three launch and return to Earth aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft and four fly to and from the lab aboard NASA-managed SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ships.
Both spacecraft serve as lifeboats during a crew’s long-duration space station stay. If a Soyuz or Crew Dragon flyer gets sick or is seriously injured aboard the station, that person is joined by all of his or her crewmates for the flight back to Earth.
With that possibility in mind, NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, agreed to fly one NASA astronaut aboard each Soyuz and one Russian cosmonaut aboard each Crew Dragon. The seat-swap arrangement ensures that at least one Russian and one American are always on board the station to operate equipment in their respective modules should one crew depart early.
The Soyuz MS-28 crew (left to right): NASA astronaut Chris Williams, Soyuz commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergey Mikaev. With Crew 11’s departure, they will have the International Space Station to themselves until four replacement crew members arrive aboard the Crew 12 Dragon next month.
NASA
With the departure of Crew 11, Williams will be on his own managing the U.S. segment of the space station until Crew 12 arrives in February.
Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, a space station veteran, rookies Jack Hathaway and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and veteran cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev are officially scheduled for launch Feb. 15. However, NASA and SpaceX are looking into moving that launch up a few days amid work to ready a Space Launch System rocket for launch as early as Feb. 6 to send four astronauts on a looping fight around the moon.
The high-profile Artemis 2 mission will be the first to send astronauts to the vicinity of the moon in more than 50 years.
SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station.
“It’s so good to be home,” said NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, the capsule commander.
It was an unexpected finish to a mission that began in August and left the orbiting lab with only one American and two Russians on board. NASA and SpaceX said they would try to move up the launch of a fresh crew of four; liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February.
Cardman and NASA’s Mike Fincke were joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who had the health problem or explain what happened, citing medical privacy.
While the astronaut was stable in orbit, NASA wanted them back on Earth as soon as possible to receive proper care and diagnostic testing. The entry and splashdown required no special changes or accommodations, officials said, and the recovery ship had its usual allotment of medical experts on board.
The astronauts will receive more in-depth medical checks at a local hospital before flying to their home base in Houston, NASA said. Platonov’s return to Moscow was unclear.
The astronauts emerged from the capsule, one by one, after it was aboard the recovery ship. They were helped onto reclining cots and then whisked away for standard medical checks, waving to the cameras.
Jared Isaacman, NASA’s new administrator, monitored the action from Mission Control in Houston.
NASA stressed repeatedly over the past week that this was not an emergency. The astronaut fell sick or was injured on Jan. 7, prompting NASA to call off the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, and ultimately resulting in the early return. It was the first time NASA cut short a spaceflight for medical reasons. The Russians had done so decades ago.
The space station has gotten by with three astronauts before, sometimes even with just two. NASA said it will be unable to perform a spacewalk, even for an emergency, until the arrival of the next crew, which has two Americans, one French and one Russian astronaut.
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