As I noted earlier this week, the Artemis II mission vehicle, which will be used for a 10-day crewed mission around the Moon, underwent a “Wet Dress Rehearsal.”
Unfortunately, NASA’s test was cut short 7when engineers detected a liquid hydrogen leak at the tail service mast umbilical interface on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, leading to a delay of the Artemis II launch from February into March.
The launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first flight of astronauts to the Moon in more than 53 years, will have to wait another month after a fueling test Monday uncovered hydrogen leaks in the connection between the rocket and its launch platform at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.“Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives,” NASA said in a statement following the conclusion of the mock countdown, or wet dress rehearsal (WDR), early Tuesday morning. “To allow teams to review data and conduct a second Wet Dress Rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.”The practice countdown was designed to identify problems and provide NASA an opportunity to fix them before launch. Most importantly, the test revealed NASA still has not fully resolved recurring hydrogen leaks that delayed the launch of the unpiloted Artemis I test flight by several months in 2022. Artemis I finally launched successfully after engineers revised their hydrogen loading procedures to overcome the leak.
Apparently, the vehicle used in Artemis I also suffered from the same issues.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Artemis 1 SLS experienced hydrogen leaks in the same location during its wet dress rehearsal three years ago. Those leaks resulted in three separate rollbacks to NASA’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) over the course of six months before Artemis 1 would finally launch.
Other problems were discovered during testing.
The wet dress rehearsal uncovered other issues — including a problem with the Orion capsule, which will carry the crew to the moon. While no one was on board Monday, teams practiced preparing the spacecraft for its passengers. A valve that pressurizes the vehicle required additional attention and took more time to close the hatch than anticipated.Teams also uncovered issues with cameras due to cold weather and audio dropouts across communication channels. “As always, safety remains our top priority, for our astronauts, our workforce, our systems and the public,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in a post on X, and that NASA will only launch when the agency is ready.
Hopefully, the issues will be fixed and the second mission will go off as successfully as the first.
Yet there may be another good reason for a delay. Space weather has heated up over the last few days.
The sun has erupted in a relentless barrage of powerful solar flares over the past 24 hours, firing off at least 18 M-class flares and three X-class flares, including an X8.3 eruption — the strongest solar flare of 2026 so far. Solar flares are ranked by strength from A, B and C up to M and X, with each letter representing a tenfold increase in energy — meaning X-class flares are the most powerful explosions the sun can produce.The culprit is sunspot region 4366, a volatile active region that has grown rapidly in just a few days. The flurry of activity began late Feb. 1 and has continued into Feb. 2, with multiple M-class and X-class flares erupting in quick succession. The prolific region appears to be far from finished. Spaceweather.com described the region as a “solar flare factory”, warning that its rapid growth and magnetic complexity make further eruptions highly likely.The X8.3 solar flare peaked at 6:57 p.m. EST (2357 GMT) on Feb. 1, unleashing a blast of extreme ultraviolet and X-ray radiation that ionized Earth’s upper atmosphere. The flare triggered strong R3 radio blackouts across parts of the South Pacific, with shortwave radio disruptions reported across eastern Australia and New Zealand, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
In risk management terms, a slipped launch window due to gas leaks is vastly preferable to a problem that arises while orbiting the Moon. The entire purpose of a wet dress rehearsal is to force hardware and procedures to fail gracefully on the ground rather than in space, where failure is “not an option”.
Hydrogen is a small, light molecule, which makes it hard to contain… so exposing every weakness in seals, valves, and interfaces now is exactly what a mature program should do.
Add in a hyperactive Sun throwing X‑class flares, and the delay starts to look less like bad luck and more like a systems check by the universe itself.
When Artemis II finally departs, hopefully it will do so with calmer space weather, with all issues resolved and under the safest possible conditions for the first crewed trip around the Moon in over half a century.
Then, onto the future…with perhaps a new vision of what space vehicles should be.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY