For the second time this year, NASA moved its Moon rocket from the hangar out toward the pad Friday in hopes of launching four astronauts on a lunar fly-around next month.
The 98-meter rocket began the slow 6.4-kilometre trek in the middle of the night, transported atop a massive crawler used since the 1960s Apollo era. It was expected to take 12 hours. The trip was held up for several hours by high winds.
If the latest repairs work and everything else goes NASA's way, the Space Launch System could blast off as early as April 1 from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre. The Artemis II crew went into quarantine this week in Houston.
The three Americans and one Canadian will zip around the moon in their capsule and then come straight home without stopping.
The Artemis II crew should have blasted off on a lunar flyaround 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 last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was during Apollo 17 in 1972. The new Artemis program aims for a two-person landing in 2028.
