CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA on Wednesday looks to send four astronauts on the most powerful rocket to ever launch humans, flying the Artemis II mission that will send them past the moon.

The Space Launch System rocket with the Orion spacecraft named Integrity sits on Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-B awaiting liftoff during a two-hour window that opens at 6:24 p.m. Eastern time. SLS will launch with 8.8 million pounds of thrust besting the power seen by the space shuttle and Apollo program’s Saturn V rockets.

Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron updated its forecast after noon, but still keeps the chance for good conditions at 80% during the window.

“We are watching some precip that is making its way toward the pad, but we expect that that is going to dissipate as get closer to our window,” said Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson after an afternoon prelaunch update. “Really good to hear the crew’s voices and talk through the day-of-launch ops. You know it’s something we simulate, but there’s nothing like the real day.”

Propellant load began before 9 a.m. and teams had no issues loading both the core and upper stages with the 755,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, completed before 1 p.m.

Headed to space are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The quartet are were suited up at KSC’s Operations & Checkout Building, and headed to the pad just after 2 p.m. By 3:30 p.m. they had taken their last breaths of fresh air donning helmets and taking up their seats in the capsule.

“That’s certainly something that we’ve been waiting for a very long time to see. It’s going to very exciting I think certainly for our team,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “It will be exciting for our country and it will be exciting for people all over the world who are watching our crew head to the pad knowing that we are just about five hours or so from launch.”

They will be the first humans to fly on Orion, which had an uncrewed test flight in 2022 that orbited the moon. The quartet won’t be on the same trajectory, simply flying by Earth’s biggest satellite, but they will potentially break the record held by Apollo 13 of the farthest any humans have flown from Earth.

Their 10-day mission will feature one day flying close to Earth to ensure Orion’s life support systems work as planned. They will also perform a proximity test of Orion’s propulsion engines to circle the SLS rocket’s upper stage, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, once it does its job, getting Orion to a higher Earth orbit, and separates from the astronauts’ spacecraft.

It won’t be until flight day 2 that they’ll punch their moonbound ticket, arriving more than three days later. Their closest approach will come on flight day 6 flying within 4,000 to 6,000 miles from the moon. An April 1 launch could mean it will reach a projected distance of 252,799 miles from Earth, which exceeds Apollo 13’s distance set in 1970 by 4,144 miles.

The astronauts’ proximity to the moon will mostly be devoted to visual observations of the far side, some of which has never been seen by human eyes before, while also taking photos and videos.

The main purpose of Artemis II is the prove out Orion’s safety for human passengers and set up future Artemis mission.

U.S. Rep. Mike Haridopolos, who represents Florida's Space Coast, was at Kennedy Space Center, heading down to wave at the astronauts as they drove by the press site in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building.

“Artemis II is the linchpin,” he said. “This is a progression, just like we did with the Apollo program. We need to gear up before we land on the moon, and this will be a great dress rehearsal as we get geared up for that.”

Artemis III was recently changed to be a mission close to Earth, aiming to launch as early as mid 2027, during which astronauts will perform docking operations with one or both of NASA’s two commercial lunar lander providers. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are working to complete usable versions of their landers in time to launch for that mission.

It won’t be until Artemis IV targeting early 2028 and Artemis V potentially by late 2028 that NASA will be sending astronauts to the lunar surface. No human has set foot on the moon since the end of the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Only four of the 12 men who ever walked on the moon are still alive, and it will have been at least 55 years between missions.

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