Nasa has announced a new target launch date for its Artemis II mission, which will mark humanity’s first trip to the Moon in more than 50 years.
The 98-metre (322-foot) rocket will roll out of the hangar and back to the pad on 19 March at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, the US space agency said, leading to a launch attempt as early as 1 April.
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 (SLS) 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 a handful of days in early April to launch before standing down until 30 April into early May.
Late last month, Nasa's new administrator, Jared Isaacman, announced a major overhaul of the Artemis program.
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. Mr Isaacman is targeting one and maybe even two lunar landings in 2028.
Nasa's Office of Inspector General this week warned in an audit 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.
Contracted by Nasa to provide the moon landers for astronauts, Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin have accelerated work in order to meet the new 2028 target date.
The inspector general's office said many technical challenges remain including refueling their landers in orbit around Earth before flying to the Moon.
"During the flight readiness review, we had extremely thorough discussions — very open, transparent,” said Lori Glaze, Nasa’s Exploration Systems Development acting associate administrator, said in a press briefing on Thursday.
“We talked a lot about our risk posture and how we're mitigating those risks. We reviewed the challenges that we've had and how we've addressed them, and we talked about the work that remains, what's left to do, and how we're going to get through all of that."
Additional reporting from agencies
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