The Orion capsule and its SLS rocket are scheduled to roll out to the launch pad for a crucial test on March 17.
," a crucial test that will take the SLS-Orion stack through many of the milestones it will hit on launch day . in Florida. SLS and Orion are scheduled to roll out to the pad from KSC's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at 6 p.m. EST on March 17, agency officials announced today. It'll likely take about 12 hours for the huge vehicle to make the relatively short trek to the pad.
The SLS-Orion stack will probably spend about a month on Pad 39B, with roughly two weeks on either side of the wet dress rehearsal, agency officials said. The vehicle will then roll back to the VAB for further analysis and processing. The May launch window runs from the 7th through the 21st, Whitmeyer said. If Artemis 1 isn't ready to go by then, the next opportunity comes from June 6 through June 16. And the next window after that runs from June 29 through July 12.
These windows are limited for a variety of reasons, Whitmeyer said. He cited, among other factors, performance constraints on the SLS, the need to line the launch up properly with Earth's rotation and the position of , and the fact that the solar-powered Orion isn't designed to fly through eclipses that last longer than 90 minutes.of crewed lunar exploration, so the agency is taking its time to make sure everything is in order before it lifts off. Artemis 1 will mark the first-ever flight of the huge and powerful SLS and the second mission for Orion, which flew to Earth orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket in December 2014.