Space & Astronomy

Artemis II technical issues fixed: NASA reveals new launch date

By T.K. Randall
March 15, 2026

Image: Artemis I Rollout
Credit: Joel Kowsky / (PD) NASA For those hoping to bear witness to the first modern manned lunar orbital flight, it has been a long wait.

Having suffered numerous technical difficulties and delays, however, NASA's Artemis II may finally be about to make history - hopefully for real this time.

Back at the beginning of February, hopes of an imminent launch of the mission were dashed when a hydrogen fuel leak was detected during a wet dress rehearsal.

After this issue was fixed, the rocket was rolled out for a second time with the launch scheduled for March 6th - but then another issue presented itself - a helium flow malfunction - necessitating yet another return to the hangar so that engineers could attempt repairs.

Now, though, NASA has offered its assurances that all these technical problems have been fixed.As things stand, the rocket will be rolled out on March 19th for launch on April 1st.

The astronauts going on the mission will be NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

They will spend several days on a trip around the Moon to properly test out all the equipment.

There have been some changes to NASA's overall schedule, with Artemis III, which was going to be the first manned landing, now being a technology demonstration in Earth's orbit.

Instead, Artemis IV will be the first actual landing of humans on the Moon since the 1970s.

Fingers crossed everything goes to plan from here on out.

Source: BBC News

Tags: Artemis, Moon