Giuseppe Cataldo

With the conclusion of the wet dress rehearsal today, we are moving off the February launch window and targeting March for the earliest possible launch of Artemis II. With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges. That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success. During the test, teams worked through a liquid hydrogen leak at a core stage interface during tanking, which required pauses to warm hardware and adjust propellant flow. All core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage tanks were successfully filled, and teams conducted a terminal countdown to about T-5 minutes before the ground launch sequencer halted operations due to an increased leak rate. Additional factors included extended Orion closeout work, intermittent ground audio dropouts, and cold-weather impacts to some cameras, along with the successful demonstration of updated Orion closeout purge procedures to support safe crew operations. As always, safety remains our top priority, for our astronauts, our workforce, our systems, and the public. As noted above, we will only launch when we believe we are as ready to undertake this historic mission. This is just the beginning. It marks the start of an Artemis program that will evolve to support repeated and affordable missions to the Moon, in line with President Trump’s national space policy. Getting this mission right means returning to the Moon to stay and a future to Artemis 100 and beyond. I want to thank the talented workforce at NASA, along with our industry and international partners, who are working tirelessly on this effort. The team will fully review the data, troubleshoot each issue encountered during WDR, make the necessary repairs, and return to testing. We expect to conduct an additional wet dress rehearsal and then target the March window. We will continue to keep the public and the media informed as readiness progresses.

Spent the day at Goddard Space Flight Center as the first stop on my roadshow across NASA’s centers. I’m not visiting for photo ops or VIP tours, but to get out where the action is and talk directly with the workforce, the industry partners and congressional delegations. There’s no question there is real work to do across all of our centers, and Goddard is no exception. We carry dated, and in some cases, unsafe infrastructure on our books, along with programs that are not always aligned with our most pressing objectives. We can do better by listening to and empowering the best and brightest to work the problems and pursue the opportunities with urgency. In that spirit, I enjoyed all the conversations at GSFC, including the tough questions, and seeing the flight hardware up close. I want to pass along my appreciation to the entire team, including those contributing to the exciting Dragonfly mission and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is on track to launch on budget and ahead of schedule. Missions like these truly help us pursue the secrets of the universe. If we ensure our resources are focused on the real needle-moving objectives, I am highly confident we can launch even more grand missions of science and discovery in the years ahead.