NASA has postponed its Artemis II mission, which was set to send four astronauts on a journey around the moon, after engineers detected a hydrogen leak during a key prelaunch test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency announced the delay early Tuesday (February 3) after halting a critical “wet dress rehearsal” with just over five minutes left in a simulated launch countdown.
The test involved filling the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with more than 700,000 gallons of super-cooled propellant and rehearsing the full launch sequence. Engineers first noticed hydrogen leaking at the rocket’s base during fueling, and despite attempts to manage the issue, a spike in leak rates forced an early end to the test. Hydrogen leaks have been a recurring challenge for NASA, including during the Artemis I mission in 2022.
Mission managers said the wet dress rehearsal is designed to spot potential problems before launch, since the SLS booster and Orion spacecraft have never carried astronauts before. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on social media, “That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success.”
The agency has now shifted its earliest possible launch window to March, with specific dates available from March 6 through March 11 and additional opportunities in April if further delays occur. Engineers will need time to review test data, address the leak, and potentially solve other issues, such as audio problems noted during communication checks.
The four Artemis II astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen—had been in quarantine in Houston but have now resumed training while awaiting a new launch date.
Artemis II will mark the first time since 1972 that astronauts travel near the moon, paving the way for future missions that aim to land humans on the lunar surface again. NASA officials emphasized that safety remains the top priority and that launch will only occur when the team is fully confident in the mission’s readiness. The timing of the next wet dress rehearsal, or whether the rocket will need to return to the assembly building for repairs, is still under review.
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