Artemis 2 countdown begins as major update issued ahead of NASA moon mission | Science | News

He added: “Our team has worked hard to get us to this point and I am very proud of the work they have done.” Just minutes ago, NASA deputy administrator Amit Kshatriya made a major update stating that the historic moon mission could happen on April 1. He said: “The team has concluded that everything continues to look good and there are no issues preventing us from moving forward at this point.”

The highly anticipated mission has entered its “pre-launch phase,” Kshatriya said.

He added that the team “stands strong and the mission is on track.”

He also thanked all NASA employees and said: “You are all very important. The skills you bring, the judgments you make, the knowledge you have, these are all things that are the lifeblood of the agency.”

“Because you are here, this mission will fly on Wednesday.”

The mission means astronauts will travel around the Moon for the first time in more than fifty years. Four astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch from NASA and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency) will embark on a 10-day flight around the moon.

They will be the first people to launch into space on the massive new SLS rocket and fly in the Orion capsule.

Although the mission is primarily a test mission, the crew will make some observations of the Moon and the deep space environment, paving the way for Artemis 3, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface.