One of the last major tests of NASA's new Space Launch System rocket will be conducted later this year before the first uncrewed mission to the moon. The wet dress rehearsal involves rolling the rocket out to Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and filling it with fuel and performing a countdown, but not actually launching it.
The test runs over the weekend and lasts for two days as the team prepares for a real launch. With the rocket on the pad, the teams will power on various systems of the rocket before loading the rocket with over one million gallons of liquid fuel. Once the rocket is filled with fuel, the team will perform a countdown to launch, check whether the clock can be recycled, and then drain the fuel out of the tanks. The test involves coordinating personnel across the Launch Control Center at Kennedy, the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Space Force Eastern Range, and the SLS Engineering Support Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
At approximately 5 p.m. NASA wrote in an update that the launch team arrived at their stations inside the Launch Control Center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This test is unusual because no press is allowed to attend in person. The Kennedy Space Center newsroom has a live stream of the rocket on the pad, but it does not include audio or commentary. The lack of independent press access to such a major test has raised questions from the space community, but NASA says this decision is due to national security concerns.
The test will continue through Sunday, April 3. The full schedule of events can be found on the Artemis blog.
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