NASA Targets March 6 for Artemis II Moon Mission

Agency official Lori Glaze says the space agency is in ‘very good position’ to launch early next month.

Jack Daleo

Saturday, February 21, 2026 at 09:00 AM ET

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Edited By:

Travis Tingle

NASA’s Artemis II SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft stand vertical at Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 10. [Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky]

Key Takeaways:

NASA is now targeting March 6 for the launch of its Artemis II mission, which will carry a four-person crew on a journey around the Moon.
This revised launch window comes after a "very smooth" wet dress rehearsal (WDR) successfully tested rocket fueling and crew procedures, largely resolving previous technical challenges.
Artemis II is the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule, intended to validate system performance in deep space and prepare for the subsequent Artemis III lunar landing mission.
Despite the confidence, NASA still needs to complete data review, significant pad work, and a multi-day flight readiness review, with backup launch opportunities available through early April.

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After moving off an early February launch window for Artemis II—a four-person sojourn around the moon and back—NASA on Friday said it hopes to launch the mission on March 6.

Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said that a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) for Artemis II “went very, very smoothly”—smooth enough that it could launch within two weeks.