The four astronauts set to fly to the moon next year on NASA’s Artemis II mission are conducting a dress rehearsal Saturday for the launch at Kennedy Space Center.
The Countdown Demonstration Test is a critical dry run of what will happen on launch day, which is currently targeted for no earlier than February. It’s designed to test launch-day procedures and help NASA refine them and make any adjustments before the real thing.
The test starts with a wakeup call for the crew – NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The four will be living at the crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center – a dorm-like facility where astronauts eat, sleep and work ahead of missions.
After the wakeup call, they will don their Orion crew survival system spacesuits in a room connected to their quarters and then make their way to the Orion spacecraft. They’ll practice getting into the vehicle, which is named Integrity, strapping in and simulating the countdown up until liftoff.
Orion will launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS. The rocket is not yet at the launch pad, so the rehearsal will happen inside Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly building, where crews have been preparing SLS for launch.
Artemis II follows Artemis I, an uncrewed test mission that sent Orion on a trip around the moon and back in November 2022. Artemis II will follow a similar lunar fly-by and prepare for the following mission – Artemis III – which will take humans to the surface.
Artemis II will mark the first time humans have ventured to the moon since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.
