NASA's launch and mission teams, along with the Artemis II crew, completed a key test on Dec. 20, a countdown demonstration test ahead of Artemis II's flight around the Moon early next year. The astronauts, supported by launch and mission control teams and dressed in launch and entry suits, boarded their spacecraft atop its towering rocket at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to confirm the launch date schedule.
By winding down the clock to just before liftoff, the rehearsal allowed NASA teams to practice the exact steps the teams would take en route to launching the test flight.
Jared Isaacman
NASA Administrator
While the launch crews in the fire halls at Kennedy Launch Control carried out procedures as they did on launch day, Artemis II crew members—NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen—put on their Orion Crew Survival System spacesuits in the astronaut crew quarters inside the Neil A. Armstrong Kennedy Production and Cash Building.
Donning the suit, the crew took the same walk that Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle and Commercial Crew Program astronauts have launched from Florida's Space Coast over the past six decades. Through the locker rooms, down the hallway and after a quick elevator ride, the crew of Artemis II exited the building through double doors bearing dozens of stickers bearing the patches of a manned mission to space.
The Artemis astronaut van was waiting outside to take crew members to the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. On launch day, the four astronauts will make the 20-minute drive to Kennedy's Launch Complex 39B before liftoff. But the location for the countdown test was High Bay 3 of the Kennedy Vehicle Assembly Building, where the Artemis II moon rocket undergoes final processing and checks before rolling out onto the launch pad. A convoy of support vehicles, as well as members of the Artemis II backup crew, NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenny Gibbons, escorted the crew to their destination.
After a short journey into the building, the flight crew rode the mobile launcher's elevator nearly 300 feet to the crew access arm and the White Room, the restricted area where crew enters the spacecraft. The final crew, whose job is to ensure smooth entry of the flight crew into the spacecraft, helped the astronauts enter Orion, which they named Honesty. The closure team assisted the astronauts by strapping them into their seats and closed the hatch after all closure operations were completed. Once the crew was assigned to Orion, teams conducted suit and communications leak checks as they had done on launch day.
During testing, teams went through the final 5.5 hours of launch day procedures, completing the countdown test approximately 30 seconds before liftoff time on launch day. As they might encounter on launch day, the teams worked through several problems in real time, including working on audio communications, environmental control and shutting down life support systems during testing. All objectives were achieved and the countdown demonstration provided a valuable opportunity to conduct operations in a launch day configuration to minimize initial learning on launch day.
Although Artemis II teams had previously conducted portions of the pre-launch countdown tests, this test was the first full integrated test involving the crew and Orion in a launch configuration. The crew will participate in additional countdown tests after the rocket arrives at the launch pad, with a focus on emergency operations.
As part of the Golden Age of Innovation and Exploration, the Artemis II test flight is the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis Campaign. It's another step toward new U.S. crewed missions to the lunar surface that will help the agency prepare to land American astronauts on Mars.
