Overview
- Engineers loaded more than 700,000 gallons of supercold propellant into the SLS for a full countdown to a 9 p.m. ET simulated launch, including planned holds and recycles to verify systems.
- Initial results from the wet dress will guide whether managers target the Feb. 8–11 window or slip to March or April, with a potential rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building if further work is required.
- The four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen—remain in quarantine in Houston pending a decision to travel to Kennedy Space Center.
- A rare Florida cold snap delayed the rehearsal by two days, eliminating Feb. 6–7 opportunities and prompting heater and purge adjustments to protect Orion and ground systems.
- Artemis II is a roughly 10-day lunar flyby to test SLS, Orion and life-support systems without a landing, marking the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.