After repeated delays, NASA is lightly penciling in launch dates of September 23rd or 27th for its Artemis I mission. A lot of things will have to go right for either of those dates to be possible, including repairs to the rocket’s fueling system, a sign-off from the Space Force, and managing to avoid an assortment of space scheduling conflicts.

Artemis I will mark the first launch of the agency’s massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and will send a spacecraft called Orion out on an orbit far past the Moon. This mission will be uncrewed and serve as a test for later missions that will send astronauts back to the Moon for the first time in decades.

After a hydrogen leak foiled NASA’s third attempt to launch the mission on September 3rd, NASA decided to do repairs while staying on the launchpad. They will be replacing seals on the connection between the rocket and the fuel lines that send liquid hydrogen fuel into the rocket. Staying on the pad will let the team test the new seals in cryogenic temperatures, mimicking conditions that would take place during an actual launch.

They are currently targeting September 17th for that key cryogenic test, which only leaves a few days before that first launch window opens on the 23rd. They’ll need about four days between a successful test and a launch attempt, said Mike Bolger, the Exploration Ground Systems program manager at Kennedy Space Center, during a press conference on Thursday.

Aside from the immediate need to repair and test the seals, there are also some other major issues that may affect NASA’s ability to get Artemis I off the ground this month. One of the biggest involves a system inside the rocket called the flight termination system, which allows the rocket to be destroyed if something goes wrong during launch.

It’s a key safety system when dealing with big rockets or missiles, and for pretty obvious reasons, it needs to be working at the time of launch. The Space Force is in charge of launches within the Eastern Range, where NASA is attempting to launch the rocket. It requires that the batteries on the flight termination system be certified as in working order at the time of launch, something that can only be done at the Vehicle Assembly Building, four miles (and many hours) away from the launchpad.

NASA already got one extension on the system’s certification, allowing them a little breathing room during their earlier launch attempts, but that waiver has now passed, and they have to apply for a new extension. Ultimately, it’s up to the Space Force to make the call as to whether or not it thinks the launch can safely go forward without rolling back into the VAB.

Then there’s everything else that’s going on in space. Now that NASA has missed the late August / early September launch windows, the SLS will have to contend with other missions’ schedules. The agency chose the 23rd and the 27th to avoid conflicts with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which is scheduled to slam into an asteroid on September 26th. There’s also a crew scheduled to travel to the ISS in early October. If Artemis I misses these next chances to launch, whether because of delays in repairs or having to roll back into the VAB for a checkup, the next chance to launch may be later in October.

NASA is already packing for its next Moon landing, and it’s ordering some new spacesuits for the trip. It has awarded a $228.5 million contract to Axiom Space to make a “moonwalking system” for the agency’s return trip to the lunar surface, NASA announced Wednesday.

Axiom was one of two companies in the running to make spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis program, which is aiming to send astronauts back to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. NASA already has a limited supply of spacesuits for use on the International Space Station, but lunar spacesuits will have to be very different. In addition to extreme temperature swings, they’ll have to contend with the Moon’s gravity and the notoriously problematic lunar dust that has a tendency to stick to everything.

NASA had been working on its own Moon spacesuits and unveiled the works-in-progress in 2019. But last year, a report found that the development of those suits was delayed and that they wouldn’t be ready in time for the planned lunar landing. Instead, in June, NASA announced that it had decided to outsource the development of its lunar spacesuit to two companies: Collins Aerospace, which has experience building spacesuits for NASA, and Axiom Space.

Axiom previously arranged to send the first entirely private crew to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket. The company’s long-term goals include constructing a commercial space station.

NASA plans to use Axiom’s spacesuits on the future Artemis III mission, which will land the first woman on the Moon. But first, the agency needs to get the Artemis I mission off the ground. That mission, which will send an uncrewed capsule out past the Moon, will serve as a test mission for future flights, including Artemis III. It has been repeatedly delayed.

NASA will not attempt to launch its Space Launch System in the coming days, the agency announced today, skipping potential launch windows on Monday and Tuesday. The announcement comes after two scrubbed launch attempts of the massive rocket, and will likely result in a delay of several weeks.

August 29th, 2022 was supposed to be the debut launch of the Space Launch System (SLS). That launch attempt was scrubbed after engineers noticed an issue with the temperature of one of the rocket’s four engines. Today, a second launch attempt was foiled by a persistent hydrogen leak that Artemis mission manager Michael Sarafin described as “large,” in a press conference after the scrub. A small hydrogen leak was also noticed during the attempt on the 29th, but this was much larger.

The launch, whenever it happens, will be the first for NASA’s SLS, a very expensive, extremely delayed rocket which has been in development for over a decade. The rocket was set to launch an uncrewed capsule called Orion on a mission called Artemis I. The mission is designed to serve as a test flight, paving the way for future missions which will carry astronauts to the Moon.

NASA hasn’t announced when its next launch attempt of Artemis I will be, but expects to have a better idea within a few days. Engineers are focused on part of the fueling system that helps send liquid hydrogen fuel into the rocket, and which can quickly disconnect from the rocket after fueling. This “quick disconnect” has a seal around it that is designed to keep hydrogen from leaking out, which is referred to as “soft goods”. One solution that is being considered is removing and replacing the soft goods around the quick disconnect.

The engineering teams are currently trying to figure out whether it will be better to do this replacement and troubleshoot any other issues back in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) or if they should stay on the pad. There are risks and benefits to both approaches. As noted by Sarafin, if NASA stayed on the pad, they could test the system at cryogenic temperatures, which would give them a better idea of how it would behave during a real launch. The downside is that NASA would also need to build an environmental enclosure to stay at the pad. If they went back into the VAB, the building itself would act as an environmental enclosure. But while NASA could replace and test the problematic parts inside the VAB, it can only do it at ambient temperature — not cryogenic.

Speaking soon after the second launch scrub on Saturday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said if the SLS rolls back into the VAB for repairs, the next launch attempt would most likely happen in mid to late October, after a planned crew mission to the International Space Station takes off earlier that month. The process of rolling the megarocket back to the VAB takes several hours.

There’s another complication too. When the rocket rolled out to the pad on August 16th, another timer started. NASA had 20 days in which to launch the rocket before it would have to be rolled back in order to test the batteries in the rocket’s flight termination system. The termination system is part of the rocket that the Space Force can use to destroy the rocket if something goes wrong during the launch and flight. NASA got approval to extend that to 25 days, but that time is almost up. Unless NASA gets another extension, it will have to travel back to the VAB anyways.

“We do not launch until we think it’s right,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference. “So I look at this as part of our space program, of which safety is at the top of our list.”

Clear your plans on Saturday: NASA says we’re going to have a rocket launch.

The space agency moved the date for the next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to Saturday, September 3rd, after determining that the initial plan for Friday was going to run into bad weather.

There was a 60 percent chance that the launch would have been delayed for weather on Friday, officials said during a media briefing. The two-hour launch window opens at 2:17PM.

This will be NASA’s second attempt this week at launching its massive next-generation rockets. The first attempted launch on Monday was scrubbed after one of the four RS-25 engines failed to reach the appropriate temperature to allow for liftoff.

The Artemis I mission is comprised of the 322-foot tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with the Orion crew capsule at the top. If the launch is successful, the 39-day mission will see SLS carry the uncrewed Orion to an altitude of just under 4,000 kilometers before the two craft separate and the core stage of the rocket falls back to Earth.

Orion will continue onward to the Moon, which it will orbit for six days before returning to Earth. The capsule is scheduled to splash down in the ocean on October 11th.

If everything goes according to plan, it will signal the start of NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon, which has been plagued by years of delays, development mishaps, and billions of dollars in budget overruns.

NASA’s giant Space Launch System will start its first journey into space with a slow crawl along the ground. The first window for the rocket’s highly anticipated launch will open on August 29th, and for once in its extremely long development history, everything is running ahead of schedule.

The original plan was to roll out the Space Launch System (SLS) this Thursday, but earlier this week, NASA decided to accelerate that schedule and announced it would start moving on August 16th. Tonight, the SLS will begin its trip by leaving the massive building where it has been carefully assembled and examined and head out to its launchpad. It’s roughly a four-mile trip but could take about 11 hours to complete.

SLS is NASA’s next big rocket, designed to carry people and cargo to deep space destinations like the Moon. It’s more powerful than the rockets that currently ferry astronauts back and forth from the International Space Station, which circles the planet in low Earth orbit. SLS has been in development for more than a decade, suffering from multiple delays and facing a rapidly ballooning budget.

The rocket could get its big debut as early as August 29th, the first opportunity for the launch of the Artemis I mission. Artemis I will see the SLS loft NASA’s Orion capsule into space and around the Moon on a trip that will take between 39 and 42 days, depending on the launch time. No people will be on board during this mission, which is a test run for future planned missions to the Moon.

NASA says that the SLS could start rolling out to the launch pad as early as 9PM ET on Tuesday, August 16th. Progress will be incredibly slow, but if you are interested in watching, NASA will be streaming footage of the rollout on its Kennedy Space Center YouTube channel, and we’ll also embed it here.

After insinuating that it planned to leave the International Space Station partnership after 2024, Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has told NASA that it intends to remain in the program until at least 2028, according to a report in Reuters. Roscosmos plans to stay involved with the ISS until it gets a new Russian space station up and running, with 2028 as the target date.

Roscosmos caused turmoil yesterday when its newly appointed director, Yuri Borisov, told Russian President Vladimir Putin that a decision had been made to leave the ISS partnership after 2024. However, the statement was vague and did not specify when after 2024 Roscosmos planned to leave, only saying that Russia hoped to transition focus to a new space station it was developing called the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS). Additionally, one NASA official claimed that the agency hadn’t had “any official word” from Roscosmos, while NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement the agency had “not been made aware of decisions from any of the partners” on the ISS.

However, it seems that Roscosmos officials had at least some communication with NASA on Tuesday, informing the US space agency that it planned to stay involved in the ISS until its ROSS station was up in 2028, according to Reuters. “We’re not getting any indication at any working level that anything’s changed,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, told Reuters on Wednesday. NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge.

NASA and Roscosmos are the two biggest partners on the International Space Station, and both entities are tasked with operating the vehicle and maintaining a continuous human presence on the ISS while in orbit. However, growing tensions between the United States and Russia over the latter’s invasion of Ukraine have prompted concern about the future of the ISS partnership. Borisov’s predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin, made plenty of threats about Roscosmos pulling out of the ISS agreement, while NASA has continuously assured the public that it is business as usual on the station.

Rogozin was known for making outlandish threats, though, and Borisov is a relatively new player at Roscosmos, so it was unclear how seriously his statement should be taken. But on Tuesday, Roscosmos published an interview with Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director of the Russian portion of the ISS, who gave more details on the plans for ROSS, according to a tweet thread of the story. He noted that ROSS will be built in two phases, with the first beginning in 2028, and that he believed it was necessary to continue operating the Russian portion of the ISS until that time so that there wouldn’t be a gap in crewed missions to orbit. Rogozin had also said there would need to be an overlap between the ISS and the new Russian space station.

So there’s no need to panic quite yet about the space station’s future. NASA still plans to operate the vehicle until 2030, and it appears that Roscosmos will be on board for most of that time.

Russia announced it has decided to withdraw from the International Space Station partnership after 2024, the Russian state news site TASS reported. Yuri Borisov, the new head of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, reportedly told President Vladimir Putin the news during a meeting on Tuesday.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, you know that we are working within the framework of international cooperation at the International Space Station,” Borisov said, according to a translated report from TASS. “Of course, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision [on] leaving this station after 2024 [has] been made.”

The decision seemingly reaffirms statements made by Borisov’s recent predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin, who had openly discussed the possibility that Russia would exit the ISS agreement amid growing tensions between Russia and the United States over the former’s invasion of Ukraine. Those statements were somewhat dubious, though, as Rogozin had a habit of making outlandish statements and threats about how Roscosmos would retaliate to sanctions imposed on Russia by the US. Additionally, NASA has continued to downplay Russia’s withdrawal, noting that Roscosmos was still working toward extending its partnership on the ISS with NASA through 2030 — the current date through which the US space agency hopes to keep the space station running.

Even now, it’s unclear exactly how this decision has been communicated to the United States. NASA did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment, but senior NASA officials at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference (ISSRDC) in Washington, DC, on Tuesday said they had not received any communication from Roscosmos. “We haven’t received any official word from the partner,” Robyn Gatens, the director of the International Space Station at NASA, said during a panel at the conference. She noted that NASA would be talking more about the plan moving forward.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, speaking from space during the conference, said they had just heard the news this morning from news reports.

“That is very recent news and so we haven’t heard anything officially,” Lindgren said during a downlink from the ISS. “Of course, you know, we were trained to do a mission up here, and that mission is one that requires the whole crew.” He added, “As a group we continue to work towards success, and that is everybody working together to make sure we’re accomplishing the science and keeping the crew and the vehicle safe.”

Roscosmos and NASA are the two biggest partners on the International Space Station, both of whom jointly keep the ISS operational every day. In fact, it would be extremely difficult to keep the ISS running if one of the two pulled out. NASA is responsible for generating electricity for the station and helps maintain the vehicle’s position, while Roscosmos is responsible for periodically boosting the station over time, preventing it from slowly falling out of orbit.

Withdrawing from the ISS partnership isn’t so simple as stating one’s intent to leave. The intergovernmental agreement, or IGA, that governs the ISS partnership states that most partners must give other ISS partners at least one year’s written notice about the intent to leave. Without a written notification, the specifics of Russia’s exit plan are still unclear. For example, Russia did not specify when it intends to leave the ISS partnership today — just vaguely stating “after 2024.”

Along with announcing the intention to leave, Borisov also said that, by 2024, Russia plans to start creating a new space station called the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), according to TASS. Rogozin previously said that there needs to be an overlap period between the creation of ROSS and the end of the ISS. Russia’s ability to start creating a new station ahead of 2024 seems particularly difficult.

Gatens at ISSRDC said she thinks Russia is simply planning for the future. “I think the Russians, just like us, are thinking ahead to what’s next for them,” she said. “And as we’re planning for transition after 2030 to commercial owned and operated space stations in low Earth orbit, they have a similar plan.”

NASA is aiming to launch its new monster rocket, the Space Launch System, on its first trip to deep space as early as late August, the agency announced today. NASA says it has placeholder dates for August 29th, September 2nd, and September 5th for the rocket’s debut, though there is still plenty of work left to do on the vehicle between now and then.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a major component of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s initiative to send humans back to the Moon. Designed to carry NASA’s Orion crew capsule into deep space, the rocket is slated to perform a series of missions over the next few years that should eventually culminate with astronauts landing on the lunar surface again. But first, NASA wants to see it fly without a crew on board, sending an empty Orion capsule around the Moon.

NASA officials stressed that they are not committing to any of these dates at the moment, but the announcement puts the rocket closer than it’s ever been to its launch. The SLS has been in development for roughly a decade, and its inaugural launch date has been an ever-moving target. NASA originally planned to launch as early as 2017, but schedule delays, development mishaps, and poor management have caused the rocket’s debut to slip again and again.

But after conducting a mostly full dress rehearsal with the rocket back in June, NASA is in the development end game, and an actual launch looms on the horizon. A more solid launch date should come closer to actual liftoff. “We’ll make the agency commitment at the flight readiness review, just a little over a week before launch,” NASA’s Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development, said during a press conference. “But these are the dates that the team is working to and have a plan to.”

After the dress rehearsal, which saw the SLS fully loaded with its propellants for the first time, NASA rolled the rocket back into the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Since then, engineers have been fixing some of the issues that cropped up during the dress rehearsal, such as a hydrogen leak that ultimately prevented the mission team from completing the test like they wanted. There are other tasks on the to-do list ahead of launch, but for now, the tentative plan would be to roll the SLS back out of the VAB on August 18th ahead of the first launch attempt on August 29th.

Depending on which day the SLS launches, each date would have a different liftoff time and mission duration. Here’s what to expect for each date:

• August 29th: A two-hour launch window opens at 8:33AM ET. The mission would last 42 days, with Orion splashing down in the ocean on October 10th.
• September 2nd: A two-hour launch window opens at 12:48PM ET. The mission would last 39 days, with Orion splashing down in the ocean on October 11th.
• September 5th: A one-and-a-half-hour launch window opens at 5:12PM ET. The mission would last 42 days, with Orion splashing down in the ocean on October 17th.

If NASA doesn’t meet these dates, the next window to launch opens in late September. The windows are dictated by the position of the Moon in relation to the Earth so that SLS can successfully get into the proper path around the Moon, and they must allow for the Orion crew capsule to be illuminated by the Sun for most of the flight, so it can get enough rays on its solar panels. NASA has a list of all the windows, as well as the criteria for them, here.

If NASA rolls out SLS to the launchpad in mid-August but cannot launch by September 5th, then the rocket’s liftoff could see a significant delay. It all has to do with the SLS’s flight termination system, which is used to destroy the rocket if something goes catastrophically wrong during the launch and the vehicle starts to veer off course. Teams must fully test the flight termination system before launch, and that work can only be done inside the VAB. Once the SLS is rolled out from the VAB, there is a 20-day time limit for the flight termination system before it has to be tested again. That means the rocket has to launch within 20 days of its rollout, or it must be returned to the VAB so that the flight termination system can get checked out again.

That testing takes time, so if SLS is forced to come back to the VAB after rolling out in August, chances are it wouldn’t be ready to fly until late October. “There is the possibility with that, that we could potentially hit the [late September] launch period,” Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager for exploration ground systems at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, said during the press conference. “But that would be a real challenge for us, I’ll be honest with you. But we would certainly give it our best shot at that point.”

The timeline could still certainly shift in the coming weeks. But for now, NASA has some semblance of a schedule for SLS’s launch, and this rocket may actually see space this year.