KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — On Friday, NASA unveiled the massive Artemis II rocket that will be used to return humans to the moon in an orbital mission that will last 10 days as the program manager assured that the threat of layoffs has not impacted production on the moon rocket.

Work continues on the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building where the Orion spacecraft has been mated to the European Service Module, where it will provide electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen. Solar arrays have also been installed to power the spacecraft while in transit to, around the moon and back to earth.

Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, the five sections of each of the two Solid Rocket Boosters are fully stacked on top on the mobile launcher. In about two weeks, they will be joined by the Space Launch System Core Stage rocket.

NASA’s Orion program manager Howard Hu said that the Orion will be the first space capsule in 50 years that will carry humans back to the moon to orbit it.

He said that work on the four solar arrays had wrapped up and have been installed on the service module. They will convert sunlight into electricity that will help power the capsule and its systems.

Another step is to put three fairings around the Orion to project it during liftoff. Then the next step after that is putting fuel in the vehicle and oxygen and water in the tanks to test how they are handled.

“And then we'll, stack on top of the Space Launch System (rocket) and, let's go to the moon and one more time. So right now, we're, targeting, no later than April of next year. So, 2026 is our target date for launch, and, we're trying to beat that date. We're working very hard. Our team's not only here, our prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, is working every day to try to deliver the vehicle as fast as we can, but also our ground teams, at, exploration ground systems and our space launch system teams are all trying to work together to shorten that timeline,” Hu said to Spectrum News during the Artemis Media Day event at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

The event was for the media to tour and learn more about the Artemis II mission.

What happens when it's all together

Once it is fully stacked at 322 feet, this building-size rocket is scheduled to take off in April 2026 from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B.

It will send NASA’s Cmdr. Gregory Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut mission specialist Jeremy Hansen to the moon, the first time humans visited the rocky satellite since 1972.

The mission objective is to make sure the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket work as designed and can safely take the quartet on a spin around Earth’s lunar sister.

Depending on the configuration (or how it is stacked) of the Artemis moon rocket, its height will vary depending on the mission requirements. For example, for the Artemis IV mission, NASA plans to use the SLS Block 1B configuration, which is 366 feet tall compared to the 322-foot Block 1 configuration being used for the Artemis II mission. This means that the larger Block 1B rocket will hold more weight in turns of fuel and storage.

Trying to get off the ground

The Artemis II has seen its fair share of challenges. In 2024, the mission was pushed back twice.

Artemis II was originally set to be launched November 2024 and then in September 2025, but now it is slated for April 2026.

The push back was the result of the heatshields during the 2022 uncrewed Artemis I mission, which was designed to test the computer software, systems and hardware.

During the 2022 Artemis I mission, the Orion capsule’s heatshield was shedding in ways that were not expected during its re-entry back to Earth.  

Since then, more than 100 tests at different facilities around the country were performed to determine the cause of the heatshield failure.

The Orion had 1,300 thermal protection system tiles that protected it from the coldness of space to the extreme heat of re-entry.

As Orion returned to Earth, it was moving at about 25,000 mph/40,233 km and it experienced temperatures of about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit/2,760 degrees Celsius.

Engineers and experts were able to re-create the cause on Earth and have developed a new method to be applied to the heatshields, stated NASA officials when it was announced that the Artemis II mission was pushed back until 2026.

“We ran over 100 tests, and we demonstrated that we understood the root cause. And we know what kind of minor fixes we need to do going forward as well. So those lessons learned, from Artemis I, were very important in terms of confidence for the spacecraft. So we have high confidence in those systems,” Hu said on Friday.

Recently, it was announced Boeing had plans to lay off 400 employees who are working on NASA’s Artemis moon rocket by April.

Neither NASA nor Boeing fully explained what this would mean to the future Artemis missions or the SLS rocket, the most powerful one in the world.

However, Hu stressed that so far, nothing has impacted the production of Artemis II.

“So I don't think there's been, you know, in my mind, impact our ability to respond to, any of the things that are that are going on around us, obviously, as individual, but as a collective, you know, we've talked a lot about and this is true for every administration change, we got to focus on what we need to do. Every administration that we've had in this country has somewhat different goals or same goals depending on how they see it. And for us as not only civil servants and NASA, but our contractors, we know what we need to do, which is do our jobs every day, do it well, and focus on crew safety and mission success. And that's what's going to, I think, win at the end of the day,” he said.

In July 2024, the Artemis II’s core stage was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center so it could be stacked.