NASA Rolls Artemis II Moon Rocket to Launch Pad Ahead of Historic Crew Mission, Aiming for February Launch

NASA has begun the crucial process of moving its Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket — the agency’s powerful new moon‑bound vehicle — to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking a major milestone in preparations for the first crewed lunar mission in more than five decades.

In the early hours of January 17, 2026, the towering 322‑foot (98‑metre) rocket, with the Orion crew capsule mounted on top, started a slow, day‑long, four‑mile trek from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B aboard a massive crawler‑transporter. The rocket is moving at a pace of about 1 mile per hour toward the seaside launch pad, where final tests and launch preparations will soon take place.

Thousands of space centre staff, families and onlookers gathered in the predawn chill on Saturday to witness the milestone moment. The rollout comes after years of meticulous assembly, testing and delays that postponed the first crewed moonshot under the Artemis programme.

Historic Mission with International Crew

Once fully at the pad, engineers will spend the coming days and weeks conducting systems integrations, pre‑launch checkouts and a wet dress rehearsal test — a full countdown simulation that includes fuelling the rocket with cryogenic propellants — to validate flight readiness. A successful wet dress rehearsal is critical before a launch date can be confirmed.

NASA is targeting as early as February 6, 2026 for the launch of Artemis II. This will be a roughly 10‑day “out‑and‑back” mission around the Moon, without a lunar landing, designed to test life support and navigation systems with humans aboard. The crew consists of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), along with Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.

Paving the Way for Future Lunar Exploration

Artemis II represents a key step in NASA’s broader Artemis programme, which seeks to establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon and ultimately prepare for crewed missions to Mars. The previous Artemis I mission, launched in 2022, was an uncrewed test flight of the SLS and Orion systems. With Artemis II, astronauts will be sent beyond low Earth orbit and past the Moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

The mission will not include a lunar landing — that objective is planned for Artemis III, now tentatively scheduled for later this decade — but it remains historic as the first crewed lunar exploration mission in over 50 years and a major technological achievement for NASA and its partners.