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Associated Press

Nasa cleared its moon rocket on Thursday for an April launch with four astronauts after completing the latest round of repairs.
The 98-metre (322-foot) rocket will roll out of the hangar and back to the pad next week at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, leading to a launch attempt as early as April 1. It will mark humanity’s first trip to the moon in more than 50 years.
The timing is interesting. From the end of March, US President Donald Trump is slated to visit China and meet with President Xi Jinping. The United States has been pressed to achieve success in its lunar programme before China sends its own crews to the lunar surface by around 2030.
The Artemis II crew should have blasted off on a lunar fly-around earlier this year, but fuel leaks and other problems with the Space Launch System rocket interfered.
Although Nasa managed to plug the hydrogen fuel leaks at the pad in February, a helium-flow issue forced the space agency to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs, bumping the mission to April.
The space agency has only six days at the beginning of April to launch before standing down until April 30 into early May.




“It’s a test flight and it is not without risk, but our team and our hardware are ready,” Nasa’s Lori Glaze told reporters at the end of the two-day flight readiness review.
Glaze and other Nasa officials declined to provide the risk probabilities for the coming mission.
History has shown that a new rocket has essentially a 50 per cent chance of success, said John Honeycutt, chair of the mission management team.
There’s so much gap since the only other SLS flight more than three years ago without anyone on board - that it’s difficult to understand any risk assessment numbers, Honeycutt said.
“It’s not the first flight,” Glaze said. “But we’re also not in a regular cadence. So we definitely have significantly more risk than a flight system that’s flying all the time.”
Late last month Nasa’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, announced a major overhaul of the Artemis programme to speed things up and, by doing so, reduce risk.
Dissatisfied with the slow pace and lengthy gaps between lunar missions, he added an extra practice flight in orbit around Earth for next year. That is now the new Artemis III, with the moon landing by two astronauts shifted to Artemis IV. Isaacman is targeting one and maybe even two lunar landings in 2028.
Nasa’s Office of Inspector General warned in an audit this week that the space agency needs to come up with a rescue plan for its lunar crews. Landing near the moon’s south pole will be riskier than it was for the Apollo astronauts closer to the equator given the rough polar terrain, according to the report.
The report cited the lunar landers as the top contributor for potential loss of crew during the first few Artemis moon landings. It listed the space agency’s loss-of-crew threshold at 1-in-40 for lunar operations and 1-in-30 for Artemis missions overall.
Contracted by Nasa to provide the moon landers for astronauts, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have accelerated work to meet the new 2028 target date. The inspector general’s office said many technical challenges remain including refuelling their landers in orbit around Earth before flying to the moon.
Nasa sent 24 astronauts to the moon during Apollo, 12 of whom landed on it. All but one of the moonshots - Apollo 13 - achieved their prime objectives. The programme ended with Apollo 17 in 1972.


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Nasa clears Artemis moon rocket for an April launch with 4 astronauts

Nasa’s next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion crew capsule. Photo: Reuters

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Nasa’s Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are seen in the distance at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday. Photo: AFP

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A Nasa image shows a close-up of a small fresh crater in the highlands near Rima Bode II. An international team of scientists says it has  identified four possible landing sites for China’s first crewed mission to the moon. Photo: Nasa

The purple star marks the proposed landing site LS2. Photo: Nature Astronomy

The Rimae Bode region and proposed landing sites. Photo: Nature Astronomy

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Nasa’s Artemis II SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft are seen on mobile launcher 1 at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in January. Photo: Nasa via TNS

One of the massive RS-25 engines for Nasa’s Artemis II Space Launch System rocket is displayed near the countdown clock at Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday. Photo: AFP

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After critical repairs, the rocket returns to the pad for humanity’s first crewed trip to the moon in over 50 years


After critical repairs, the rocket returns to the pad for humanity’s first crewed trip to the moon in over 50 years.


Nasa clears Artemis moon rocket for an April launch with 4 astronauts

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}After critical repairs, the rocket returns to the pad for humanity’s first crewed trip to the moon in over 50 years

After critical repairs, the rocket returns to the pad for humanity’s first crewed trip to the moon in over 50 years