Artemis II nears launch with wet dress rehearsal

By Alimat Aliyeva

NASA has announced that the countdown has officially begun for the wet dress rehearsal of the Artemis II mission to the Moon. On Friday, 30 January 2026, the space agency said it would target Monday, 2 February, for the rehearsal. By Saturday, 31 January, NASA confirmed that the countdown started at 20:13 EST (1 February, 01:13 UTC), marking 48 hours until the first wet dress rehearsal window, Azernews reports, citing foreign media.

The simulated launch window is scheduled to begin on 2 February at 21:00 EST (3 February at 02:00 UTC). The timing has been slightly delayed due to cold weather and high winds at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is currently on the launch pad. As a result, the earliest potential launch date for Artemis II has now been pushed to 8 February 2026. Previous target dates of 6 or 7 February are no longer possible, according to NASA.

The wet dress rehearsal will allow NASA’s ground teams to practice the full launch-day procedures to ensure a smooth mission. While the four astronauts will not participate directly, the rehearsal will involve key operations such as loading cryogenic liquid fuel into the SLS rocket, conducting a launch countdown, testing the ability to recycle the countdown clock if the launch needs to be scrubbed and restarted, and draining the rocket’s tanks to simulate scrub procedures. Once these tests are complete, NASA will set an official launch date for Artemis II.

Artemis II will mark the first mission to return humans to the Moon since the Apollo era. The four astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen – will orbit the Moon but will not land. Their Orion capsule will launch into Earth orbit aboard the SLS rocket and, after a final go-ahead, begin the journey toward the Moon. The mission will take the crew farther than any humans have ever traveled, using the Moon’s gravity to slingshot around the far side before returning to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

With the countdown for the wet dress rehearsal now underway, humanity could be less than a week away from witnessing Artemis II lift off, beginning a new chapter in crewed space exploration. Interestingly, during the Apollo missions, astronauts could see only about 59% of the Moon’s surface from orbit, but Artemis II will give the crew a view of nearly 100% of the lunar far side, offering a perspective never before seen by humans.