Artemis II L-1 Countdown Status News Conference

Antonia Jaramillo, NASA communications; Jeff Spaulding, senior NASA test director; and Mark Burger, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, U.S. Space Force, participates in a news conference on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, to discuss the upcoming Artemis II test flight at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Artemis II mission will take Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch from NASA, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen from the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back aboard NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft from Launch Complex 39B no earlier than 6:24 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 1.

What is said in the film

Good afternoon. You're looking at a picture of the Artemis II crew just taken yesterday at Launch Pad 39 B with the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. Our first launch attempt for the Artemis II mission is tomorrow, April 1st. The 2 hour launch window opens at 6:24 p. m.

eastern time. Welcome. I'm Antonia Jaramillo, and this is the prelaunch news conference for the Artemis II mission. Joining us today to speak about the launch countdown is Jeff Spaulding, senior NASA test director. Good afternoon.

And Mark Burger, our 45th launch weather officer with the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Thank you. They're going to provide some brief opening remarks. And afterwards, we're going to take some questions from media here in the room as well as online. For those joining us over the phone, you can press Star One to ask your question.

So without further ado, we'll kick it off with you, Jeff. Thank you. All right. And good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. And thanks for joining us today.

We are a little over 29 hours from our, opening of the launch window tomorrow. And, I am very excited myself. And, just coming from the firing room, just a little bit ago, on my way over here, talked to, a bunch of members of the team, and I'll say, normally when we're in the firing room, working over there, folks have got their heads down and they're working, and they do doing all the business that we do over the space business. But I'll say there was a lot of smiles today, so, felt really good about that. As the team is preparing, I think everybody's pretty excited and understands, the significance of this launch.

We did talk to the, flight crew last night. We had a briefing with them. We had another one, just a little bit before I went down in the firing room. We had another briefing with them. Last night was just to kind of go over the day, launch, routine with them and kind of a refresher for ourselves and for them.

And, and that went really well. They were in great spirits. And then we had another briefing today just to talk about how the launch countdown was going. And as, we'll talk here in a little bit. It's been going really well.

Let's see, since Charlie spoke to yesterday, we've, we've got quite a bit of work done. We started out, yesterday. The first thing we do usually is fill up the sound systems with water. And when we start working on getting the liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen systems ready for our, propellant loading that's coming up in the future. We did power up all of the vehicles.

We powered up the Orion core stage as well as yesterday. We did, communication checks, RF checkouts, on the systems. And, and then after that, we got through all of that work. Then we went ahead and powered down because there was no more work for them until later tonight when we power back up. But of course, of course, Stage and Orion stay powered up through the remainder account.

Today we got launch, pad, ground system configurations and work. We're doing close out in a number of areas. We're doing walk downs. As we, we work through the pad to make sure everything is configured for launch. We're also in work on the late.

So right now, we should be getting the, avatar in the, bags that we're doing in the late soak. Going up. They were, prepping them in the, cr down in below the pad. The pad terminal change out room, which is, the area with to place the pad where we have some rooms and getting those ready to go up. And, they should be being installed as we speak.

And then let's see, tonight we're going to be doing, a whole lot of other work. As we get ready, to clear the pad, we do have some work associated with the Orion, ground equipment and systems that we used to do the leak checks on the, crew suits. And so we'll be working those later tonight to configure those and check them out and make sure they're ready for when we, hook up to the crew on launch day. Preparing some of the Orion guidance systems later tonight as well. We do intend to clear personnel from the pad at about three in the morning.

At that point, and then we'll get ready for our RTG and to changeover at about four in the morning. We, we do that, we purge the vehicle with air, routinely for the whole flow. Once we get to this point where we're, we're getting ready to add, hazardous, propellants like hydrogen, for example, we change over to Gen2 to have an inert environment for, for safety purposes on the vehicle and all of the, the volumes that are on the, let's see later. Once we get through the energy into changeover and all the other work is done, our launch director will have a, final weather brief and once we get out of that, she'll signal the team that we are ready to start our propellant loading. And that's, scheduled to occur at about 734 tomorrow morning.

That loading takes a little over 5. 5 hours. We'll work through that. As mentioned yesterday, by the launch director, we have inserted, some time in front of that, propellant loading time frame so that if we are, in fact, done with all of the work and are ready to go and we can start a little bit early, like a few minutes, we will try to take that and take every bit of time that we can to get ready and prepared for the crew and be prepared for anything else that might happen. So, we did that purposefully to give ourselves a little bit of room in that time frame.

Based on the launch director's guidance, let's say during the propellant loading, the flight crew will wake up at about 945 tomorrow morning. They'll have breakfast and, start working towards their, preparations for launch day, and getting their suits on and doing. There's all the other work that they have, to get ready to head out to the pad. And then, once we get to all stages, replenish, which is a little after one, almost 115 in the afternoon tomorrow, we'll send a close our crew to the pad. I'll say just replenish is when we're done tanking.

Essentially, we filled all the propellant, on to the core stage and the, the upper stage. And at that point, we're only just replenishing the the propellant that's boiling off at the same rate. So we keep it full. We do lose quite a bit of propellant during that time frame. And so we will continue to just, work that throughout.

After that, we'll send the flight crew to the pad. They're going to head out a little before, 2:00 and, to get into the spacecraft. As I mentioned at the close, our crew is going to go out before them. So they'll have been working that time to prepare the capsule for the flight crew arrival. And then the, the flight crew get out there, and then I'll work on the insertion portion in which we're going to strap the, flight crew members into the seats, of Orion.

And then after that, we'll we'll do the final closeouts in the crew module. We'll close the hatches. There's some pressurization checks we do and some other things. And at the end, and then we'll clear the white room, and then get ready, to get into terminal count. Our close.

Our crew clears the, white room at about 530 tomorrow night. It's almost an hour before launch. That's our plan time. After that point, we'll finish the rest of the work in configurations that we can do remotely. And then.

Excuse me, we'll proceed into the, the launch team, Paul. And then after that, the launch director will perform her management pull, and then we'll get that terminal count for the last ten minutes of launch countdown. So that's essentially the the work ahead of us. And I would say that our team has been working amazingly hard through these, weeks and months, trying to get this vehicle ready to where it is. We've had some challenges.

The team has done an outstanding job managing each and every one of those throughout all of this, through many different scenarios, through weather, through lots of different things that we've had to, to work through to try to get through all of this and get to where we are today. People are excited and ready to go on this, this first chapter on our way back to the moon, since the 1970s. So we're very excited. So Mark, over to you. Right.

Thank you Jeff. Good afternoon everybody. So, amazing times. It's great to be here at this point. And of course, weather has been, a nuanced thing for us at times, here in the generation phase of, this mission.

But again, look outside right now, great weather. Hopefully we will keep all of that, although the breezes continue to be an issue for us, but, a minor one for us in terms of weather. If we could pull up the satellite imagery here, you can see currently what we're looking at. Another beautiful day here in Florida. See a few cumulus clouds moving from the east side of the state towards the west.

That is our onshore flow that we've had really the most, for the last two weeks or so. And a few of those, cumulus clouds could evolve later today into a few showers, much like what we saw yesterday evening. And again, that's going to be one of the watch items for weather as we go into, tomorrow and tomorrow afternoon as well. Let's take a look at some of the overview slides here. Just to kind of give you a synopsis of what we're looking at here.

So the breezy weather does continue again. This is a very resilient vehicle. So despite the breezes, it looks like that that concern is a minimal concern for our day of launch. Lightning risk, with any sort of showers that we have is quite low, generally only on the order of 5 to 10%. And that would be, generally during the late afternoon.

And any of that activity pushes towards Orlando after that. So again, that leaves us in a better spot here. For our launch opportunity, we take a little bit look at what else could potentially be of an impact. You may have heard about the sun. It's become a little bit more active.

Here over the last day, we've had a of a solar flare erupt, but again, no. Or minimal impact for us out of that, as most of the energy is not earthward facing. So again, we continue to look good in that department as well. We look at towards backup opportunities. So for whatever reason, if we can't utilize tomorrow, the weather of course is a changeable entity and we do have a tendency to move towards somewhat less favorable through the rest of the week.

It isn't a huge drop off, but again, kind of a little bit more of a situation where we'll have to monitor those, feisty cumulus clouds and, potentially a few showers and breezes as well. So we go to the next slide, please. And again, I just wanted to bring this up real quickly with the sun. So this was an image here from this morning. Again, the area that's circled on the solar disk.

That is the area that we were watching that produced a solar flare yesterday. Again, it's directed most of its energy, away from the Earth. And in fact, there's been no response in terms of the, particular particles that we look at that could influence the launch vehicle. And so by this point or within the next couple of hours, if we don't get a response at all from our satellite data, then, that threat will have waned as well. We'll still have to watch that sunspot group, however, because it is rotating off towards the center of the solar disc.

So again, this flare not a concern. But should there be additional ones that will be something that we'll have to monitor a bit. But again, at the current time, I see no issues in terms of our launch capability for that. Next slide please. All right.

And taking a look at our cross section. So we we meteorologists like to look at the atmosphere not only on maps, but we also like to look at what's happening through the depth of the atmosphere and with time. So here at Kennedy Space Center on this graph, you can see, the metrics there, altitude there, going up into the atmosphere basically to the level of what a jet aircraft would fly. And then in time we go from left to right from today through the weekend, including our launch opportunities. So the green on this map, which pops out here, it's just a moisture profile.

It doesn't necessarily mean rain. It just means that there's a little bit more of a predisposition for more clouds and rain. You also see the winds on there. Those are the black lines that are there with the little barbs on the end of them. So that gives us an indication of wind speeds.

So right now we're out of the east southeast will generally remain in that direction. We might to back a little bit more to easterly winds as we go. But generally speeds in the 15 to 20 knot range, which again does not violate any of our liftoff weather constraints. There. You do see a superimposed on there the various launch opportunities including tomorrow is the primary window and then the next three days.

So you do see a day to day fluctuation, with that moisture content on any given day will likely get a few showers to develop off of that. But again, with the onshore flow, most of those showers with the sea breeze each day, which tend to be the more vigorous showers, will move off towards Orlando. You do see towards the end of this chart, so going into the weekend and beyond, a much more massive amount of moisture. The green there and did want to point that out because this is just but one model at one time, and there has been a fair amount of inconsistency to how that moisture evolves. So it's just a pretty strong hints that we will see, an increasingly unfavorable environment as we get beyond this weekend or maybe late into the weekend.

But again, I wanted to point that out because some of the charts I'm going to show you, utilizing another model gives you an idea of the battle that us meteorologists follow. Every day we're trying to assess the uncertainty component of the atmosphere. So next slide please. All right. So this is a for tomorrow.

Again the green blotches here would indicate rain. You can see still an onshore flow. You do see a little bit of green to the west of us again that would be seabreeze driven activity that is moved off towards the west during the late day hours. But still, if you squint hard enough, you can see a few green blotches lurking in the Atlantic waters. Again, much like yesterday evening if you were out and about, the few showers rolled in.

That is certainly a possibility for us again for tomorrow evening. Next slide please. We are now in range, though, of some of our more high resolution model guidance. So this, indicates two different models that we look at here for the opening of our launch window for tomorrow evening, you can see some of them, showing a few blotches of showers offshore. Particularly the model that's on the left there.

The right is mostly clear for us and has more of the showers again to the west of us and again in this pattern with an onshore flow, any showers that we have will move from east to west there. So again, looks pretty good. Even if we have showers around we have a two hour launch window. We should be able to to shoot the gap between those showers. And none of these, look particularly vigorous.

Again, as I mentioned, the risk for lightning, which would expand, our, standoff distances as far as, launching a vehicle looks up pretty minimal for that threat for tomorrow. Next slide please. So putting, the graphics into numbers here. Still maintaining a 20% chance of a no go condition during the launch window. So the optimistic side of me says that means, 80% chance of go here again.

Isolated showers, wandering around. But again, a lot of real estate between those showers, in all likelihood. So again, we should be able to find some clear air to, launch Artemus to again there. Those winds out of the east southeast, 15 to 20 knots, mild temperatures there. And again, the order of concerns from the weather standpoint here, cumulus cloud.

And then the winds would be a secondary threat and then a much more distant that threat would be, sold our weather again, the current flare. Not a concern. It would be if there were any additional ones that form on the sun. Potentially we would have to to watch those. So let's go into the next day for our Thursday.

Again, pretty similar pattern still onshore flow. It does look a little windier again. So that is an additional concern. And you also see a little bit more green at least in the area. So again, I do suspect that a Thursday evening attempt would have, a little bit more weather to deal with.

So a POF of roughly 40% is what I'd be advertising for a Thursday evening launch attempt. Again, very similar concerns with the cumulus clouds and the winds as well. And then the next day, going into our Friday to close out the workweek here again. Now, you see, very similar pattern, winds us still in that roughly 15 to 20 knot range and, easterly or southeasterly and still some green blotches out over the ocean. So again, that's a hint that they'll still be enough moisture to generate some showers.

But there does again, look to be more breaks in that weather for Friday. So POF would go back down to 25%. So roughly in the same ballpark as tomorrow for Friday. Tomorrow still looks to be probably the most optimum day of the lot. And then finally going into the weekend for Saturday again, this is what I pointed out on that cross section in my earlier slides.

Is that that moisture fetch that was shown later in the weekend on that model? You can see it's a lot closer to home as we go into Saturday. It's actually spilling some of that moisture in towards us. Again, this is probably the most aggressive model at that. So again, just part of that uncertainty component that we deal with when we have limited forward visibility going out a number of days.

So, all things considered, a Saturday evening launch attempt would definitely have to throttle the POF back up again to right now about 30% or close to 1 in 3 chance of a weather violation on that date. So tomorrow looks to be the best. Other days hit and miss, but still pretty good. There's nothing here that is screaming a no go for the entirety of the window for any one of these attempts. Thank you.

Mark, we like to hear that. All right. We will now take it. Open up the floor to questions here in the room. And also online.

Just as a reminder to those joining us over the phone, you can press Star one to submit a question. All right. We will start with Bill Harwood. Hey, Bill, with CBS news. Jeff, good to see you back here again from your shuttle days.

It's been a while. I think for Artemis one, there was something like, 42, 41 in Colas, collision avoidance cutouts. What's the what's the story for Artemis two? There's a lot more stuff up in low-Earth orbit than there used to be. Thanks.

Yeah, there's there's quite a few more that we manage now, and and part of that is, how we're actually, laying out the Colas. We had combined a number of, Colas during Artemis one, where there was small gaps in between them. And now we're showing all of the Colas to give us more flexibility, if you will, because when you have, if you when you combine those, it takes out larger chunks of time when you potentially you could have launched in one of those, points between there. So if you had, say, three colas with a small at a time, whether and you combine them all, it takes out a larger chunk than leaving those gaps. And we're pretty good.

Now, during our trainings at being able to pick up the clock quickly and on the fly and hit those very narrow gaps that are in between, all of these colors that we're dealing with now. So, I think that it's definitely in our best interest to, to keep it where it is. Right now we're at about 156, and they assess that on a daily basis. So it could change it by a couple. All right.

We will go to Marsha Dunn. Marsha Dean, Associated Press how much wiggle room do you have to either halt the countdown or, deal with a solar flare? That is a big one and comes out at you like during the, you know, the you know, once tanking begins. I just didn't know how much heads up time you need and just sort of talk about that, please. So we have a launch commit criteria that that are outlined, for the solar weather and those go down to T -six minutes.

And so we would be evaluating those throughout. Mark and their team would be looking at those. And and if there were analysis, the violation would call it back through the launch. Weather officer to the launch director. Mark, I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add there, but yeah, I'll add a little bit.

That's exactly right. And just to give you kind of a background, currently our satellite data from this most recent event that erupted yesterday, as far as the actual particles or protons that would potentially impact a launch for the vehicle, we're running about two orders of magnitude below our constraint and that just barely above background level. So, again, we have a lot of time to to see the response. And in fact, these particular particles, the protons, they are laggards. So if there's an eruption we'll get the x rays first.

Those will be detected by satellite. And then the protons follow. And those are the ones that are a little bit more, nuanced in terms of the actual, ability to launch. You know, those were where the constraints are based. So we do have lead time for that.

Thank you both. We'll go to Jackie right there in the last room. Hi. Thanks for doing this. Question for Jeff.

So mean we've been learning over the past few days that because of this larger hydrogen tank, there's more flexibility with recycling. But we also were told that if you have to hold or abort for weather or a technical issue after t -five minutes that you can't do a same day recycle. I was wondering, can you walk us through that? Why is that T -five minute mark significant? I would just love to hear more about what is and isn't possible.

During terminal count. So the the main driver in a recycle is the amount of time that you have. Because a recycle does take, a fair amount of time for us, it's about 75 minutes if we've gone all the way through, from six down to about ten and a half or even down to 33 seconds. And we've been in that time frame, it could take as much as 75 minutes. It takes less than that the closer we are to six minutes, because that's when we stop actually topping off the tanks at that point, and we shut everything off and it's boiling off and so, but the five minute constraint, it's not really a constraint there for us as to whether we can or cannot.

We can do a recycle as long as there's enough time in the launch window to perform it. We can do a recycle and all the way down, the only constraint we have is if we get inside of T -33 seconds and we have a cut off, then we're going to have to scrub for the day because we can't recycle from 30 after 33 seconds. All right. We'll go up front right here. Yes.

Burt Dict from at Aster magazine, National Space Society, we often hear that about 400,000 people were involved with the Apollo program, and certainly tens of thousands have been involved with Artemus. As we get ready to the launch, I just want to recognize the workforce and see what's their mood. As we as I know they're focused in their jobs, but how are they all feeling? While the people that I get the pleasure to work with and talk with ours are extremely excited, we have, a large, mix of young and, and more seasoned people like myself and, and as such, everybody understands the significance of this mission and especially the flight crew. But the team that I get to work with, they come in every day, and they.

You mean people are concerned sometimes that we are working so hard towards these milestones and things, but the really isn't. People love coming to work. They love doing this job, and that's why they're here. And they work through it every single day to get us to this point. I think everybody understands what our mission is, and that's to get back to the moon, and we're going to establish a presence there in the very near future.

And the fact that we've changed direction and been able to get some additional launches that really change the calculus for a lot of people as to to their, to the what the we were doing and how we were going to get there and the things that we're going to do. So I think there's a lot of excitement and fervor within all of the groups that are out there, but especially here at Kennedy, the folks that I see are very, very excited to get on with this mission and and get on and get started with the next one. And we've got boosters coming in in a month. So, we're going to be looking for that. Thanks, Jeff.

We are excited. All right. We're going to take some questions over the phone. We have Ken Chang with The New York Times. Thank you.

This is for Mark. I was just wondering when you say there's a 20% probability of violation, is that 20% for the entire two hour window, or is it 20% that there will be a red during the window? And if the latter, you say what the chances are that there would be a launch opportunity? Thank you. Yeah.

Good question. So again, the 20% just refers to the probability of having a violation during the launch window. That violation could last five minutes. It could last 30 minutes. It could last an hour.

In this particular setup, I would imagine that if we get a violation, generally cumulus cloud would be the most likely candidate, probably in and out and inside of about 30 minutes. And then again, as kind of the high resolution models hinted to and what the pattern supports, likely we would have additional opportunities within a two hour duration window. Thank you. Next up we have Christopher MC with the Hudson Star Observer. Thank you for the information today and for holding this briefing.

I just want to ask a follow up can on the weather hold question. I know you can't completely control that with where you are in the count, but I think you've mentioned Mark in the two hour window. There are some bands of green that potentially be coming through is an optimal situation. Could you kind of walk us through, is that like holding a ten minutes and then you're waiting for that band to move through? And proceeding on from the ten minute mark, is it a 20 minutes?

Is there kind of a, what are the opportunities for kind of being the best to hold that as far as the holds go? We have, very prescribed holds as to where we can hold. Generally, if we have a weather concern, we're gonna hold it. T -ten minutes. We won't pick up the clock from there.

Generally, if we have a weather constraint, if we are counting within between 10 and 6 minutes, we can hold it. Six. We can hold there for quite a while, actually, through the remainder of the, the launch window, if there is a violation that occurs between 10 and 6 of the of any of our weather L releases, so we can sit there for a while if we if we pick up a weather constraint inside of T minus six and counting, if it's something that's most likely, if we're gonna have a constraint, we're probably not going to get it in a very short period of time. So we'll have to do a recycle and then come back and see if the weather is going to be good on the other side of that. But, we have very prescribed whole points and where we can, you know, stop.

And then, pick up the clock again as required. Thank you. We'll now take questions back here in the room. We have one here right up front with this gentleman over here. Hi.

Good afternoon, Tom Costello with NBC news. As you are now back on the pad. And of course, in February, you dealt with the issues on the wet dress and the tanking issues. What will be the earliest concerning signs you'll be watching for as you begin tanking tomorrow morning? Assuming everything is going well, but you will clearly have your eyes very closely monitoring that tanking progress, what will you be closely watching for that there could be signs of trouble.

The well, the first thing where we would probably be looking at is a recurrence of the, these events that happened previously. Right. So, once we get an a fast fill on hydrogen, that is where we had the previous issue, where we had the leaks. We believe that we've solved those through, we've changed the Seals. We've done exhaustive testing, and, and so we feel pretty good about that.

We went through a wet dress, with that seal. So all of that says that we feel pretty good, about all of that. But that's where we would generally be looking at. First of all is right there at the beginning when we transition from slow fill to fast fill on the hydrogen side. Thanks.

We'll take some more questions over here in the room. Let's go over to this side. We'll go right here up front as well. Hi Sawyer Rosenstein with NSF. We talked obviously about the weather here at the Cape at around the area.

But what about abort weather criteria. Can you go into, what that looks like for the coming days? And also how often are you measuring it? How are you measuring it as well? Okay.

Yeah. Good question. And a complex one actually. So the winds are obviously coming from onshore. And the whole point of an in case of an aboard is if we have to, utilize that system, we do not want to have the Orion capsule land back on land.

So there are particular thresholds are really the component of the onshore wind that's exactly perpendicular to the coast. And so just getting a wind out of the east southeast, the the actual coastline is more oriented northeast. So we, we take only a fraction of that onshore component, which helps us out. Now, if the winds were starting to back, if we saw that indication on maybe one of the backup days, that instead of them coming out of southeast, they were more north easterly, we would unfortunately be exposed to a higher percentage of that onshore component. So we do look at it at a layer not only at the ground, but all the way up through 40 800ft.

And to make that assessment into an average speed through that layer. And we actually do have calculations to run that. But the decision point is actually from a balloon that is launched at L -three hours. And ten minutes. We'll be providing the launch director already with assessments of the forecast well before then.

By that L -three hour and ten minute balloon is really what we'll report the hard line data as to whether or not the, that component that is onshore, northeasterly, is actually in violation of the magnitude constraint of that. And then at that point, if that were to be the case, and we'd be continually advising the LD about what our expectations are, subsequent balloons will be launched and will also give us a read for that. In addition to balloons, we also have, the 915MHz sounders that we have, which also give us real time assessments of what the wind direction and magnitude is. So we have a number of ways to address us. So even if we were to proceed deeper into the countdown weather of course changes.

And so the forecast component plus the actual hard core, balloon data and the sounding data gives us that ability to make a forecast and provide numbers. So it's possible at one point in the countdown, we could be technically unacceptable for that low level wind abort constraint, but then evolve to be acceptable or vice versa. Thank you. Mark. We'll go ahead and take then the person right behind him, Tim Dodd.

Everybody astronaut. Can you give us a quick little refresher on if we do go through an entire launch window tomorrow? You know, and we might be holding for weather or whatever. We do have a 24 hour reset, a recycle capability for Thursday. Is that correct?

And then and or if that's not correct, what is the return around look like? And if we do burn up a 24 hour recycle, what then? Are we at 48 hours for the next attempt? Can you just run me through the the full reset situation? Sure.

And, and we, we generally would refer that as more of a scrub than a recycle because I recycle. Is that time that we have a second attempt? But for our scrub plan, we have, opportunities right now we're set up for 48 and 24 hour capabilities throughout. We have, four launch attempts available to us in six days, and we'll take and combination of that. As I mentioned yesterday, I want to mention, our sort of baseline, our preferred method is to do a 48.

Then we're into 24 and then followed by 48. And that to set us up for LOX tankers. But there are a lot of other factors that come into that. If in fact, we have weather or other types of things that may say that. Second, if you wait 48 hours, those aren't good days.

So there's a whole lot of factors that come in to that evaluation when we determine the date we set up for dates, and then we adjust as we need to based on a what happened during, they kicked us out for the scrub or any other types of things. So but we have capabilities for four times in six days, and, and I need to have 48, a couple of 48 hour scrubs in there so that I can take tankers for the liquid oxygen system. Thanks. We'll now go to the other side. We'll go right up there.

Hi Robert Pearlman with collectSPACE. com. The you know, there's a long history, dating back to the Apollo era guys of pulling pranks on launch day with the with the launch team and with the launch team pulling pranks on the on the flight crew. And given that tomorrow is April 1st, I was wondering if maybe, without spoiling anything, if there's been any talk about that or whether there's actually been a decision to not do that and stay away from that. So, I am not aware of, any, any pranks that anybody intends to pull on on the flight crew or in the, the launch team itself.

So, I think I'll just leave it at that, but I'm not aware of any. And, I'm hoping that we just, stay focused on the on the launch tomorrow. So that's our plan. Good plan. All right, we'll go, to Ken Kramer over here.

Oh, or to that gentleman instead. We'll get you next. Hi, Jeff. Elsa. Space news.

For Mark, if there is another CME solar event of some kind, how much time do you need between when it's detected to provide sort of the all clear or say that it is in fact in violation of conditions? I'll tell you that, you know, it really, you know, solar forecasting makes, terrestrial forecasting look easy. So, of course, the sun is, you know, an entity that has almost a mind of its own, but the, first initial indication is a surge in X rays that arrive, roughly eight minutes after the event. But the protons, which are one of the constraints, for launch, those lags some time, you know, it could be in the order of a number of minutes to hours and then, potentially, another any sort of additional flare. Of course, we'd be watching real time on satellite data.

So sometimes those are pretty quick fuze or quick turnaround events. But, oftentimes in this kind of situation, the spike would happen. Pretty gradually. So you'd see an uptick in those protons. And then eventually that would be a precursor to a more concerning surge.

But again, right now we're hovering right around background levels, and it takes actually quite a bit of energy, directed towards the Earth for us to even get close to those constraints. And right now, where that sunspot group is, it's still kind of out on the limb, talking, to the experts at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center this morning. They're the ones who monitor this and forecast this, though they're definitely more, in that lane than I am. They also see kind of about a 55% chance that we would get an Im class flare over the next 48 hours. That's a lower level flare.

Again, probably not a concern at all. And then a 10% chance over the next 48 hours of an additional X-Class. But again, that doesn't say anything of how that energy is directed, which at this point that energy will have a preference to not be directed towards Earth in a few days time from now. If we were to get another flare from that sun group, sunspot group, as it rotates towards the center of the solar disk, that would be something that would predispose us to a getting a little bit more of that energy. But as far as whether or not that's actually enough to to trigger a constraint, that's still a pretty high bar to reach.

Thank you. Well, now go up front right over here. All right. Thank you for doing this, Ken Kramer, space up close. For Jeff.

Tell me, I'm very interested to know about the locks and the hydrogen testing that you're doing. You mentioned you're doing a little bit. I think. Can you go to some detail? What are you doing to ensure the best possible outcome so that we don't have any leaks, especially of hydrogen?

Well, that was essentially the purpose of excuse me, WDR to as we went through that and then likewise, we had done it. Yeah. The pad when when we're back we do a number of different leak tests and pressurization tests and decay checks and those types of things throughout the system. We do more of those when we get to the pad, as after we hook up the systems at the pad, we test the system from end to end for the same types of things. As far as on, the liquid oxygen or system and, and electrolyte, the hydrogen system, both we, we do what we call dew points, meaning we purge those to the point where we want to make sure that we have no moisture in the lines or to extremely low level, so that you don't have potential icing in the system.

So we do all of these different things to make sure that the system is going to behave in the way we expect it to. On launch day, and we've accomplished all of that to date. So we should be good. Thank you. We'll now take some questions over the phone.

We have TJ Mascaro with The Epoch Times. Good. And good afternoon. Thank you so much for taking the time. My questions for Mark.

Can you please give, bit of a refresh about, the, cloud violations and, the concerns behind them? Yeah, indeed. So, cumulus cloud. What is what, the one that we're talking about here. And that's one of the lightning launch criteria.

That's actually the most commonly violated here on the east coast of Florida. Any time of year. The again, you walk outside, most days, you'll see a puffy what looks like a cotton ball out there. If that cotton ball gets more agitated and it grows throughout the depth of the atmosphere, that's when it starts triggering our so-called stand off distances. That could cause an issue for launch.

So as long as they're shallow and flat, not an issue to fly right through them, but they get up to certain levels of altitude. It could be as much as a ten mile standoff distance between the rocket on its flight path, or the launch pad and the edge of that cloud. And so, again, they have to get quite vigorous. They don't even have to produce the lightning to get necessarily at that ten mile standoff distance for the launch. Date coming up, I don't foresee, any of the cumulus getting that high into the atmosphere or that cold, which would trigger that much real estate being blocked off for us.

But we could certainly have a fly through considerations, which means we can't launch the rocket directly into the cumulus cloud, or possibly even as far as five miles from it. Just given how the atmosphere profile looks like, the depth of moisture, it's pretty shallow, even though it feels really humid out there. So again, that helps us, in that consideration. But I'll also point out that just looking at our overall, climatology here on the Eastern Range. So almost one out of four launches over the course of the year would have one or more.

No go like lightning launch commit criteria doesn't mean the launch scrubbed, but again it's a pretty common occurrence. Scrub would be a lot lower percentage than that. So again that kind of speaks to the transitory nature of these clouds. They get a two hour launch window. They could be in the flight path and then just as soon be right out of it.

Thank you. Well now go back to the room and we'll take it. And the second row here to, this lady right there. Nicole material, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation going back to the, x flares. I know that there is a radiation shielding test that will be done on this mission.

Can you talk about what that radiation shielding is and how it works? And, if you needed to do it, let's say day after tomorrow after launch, would they be able to do that quick enough? Go ahead. And to prove that to Jeff, for. Yeah, the the crew has the ability and and we anticipate that if there are in fact, any need for shielding from radiation on orbit, they have contingency plans for that.

They're going to practice some of that during the mission as far as, where they go into the vehicle and, and those types of things, there's there's some space in there that they can actually, move into in the vehicle that will, provide an additional shielding of the, the, components of the ship itself, which provide, the shielding inside of the the areas on which they would be able to, to get to, they also, would potentially move some of the equipment near, to some of the, to by the windows and some of the other things as they do that. But it's, there's a protocol that they have for that, and I'm not probably the most versed person on it, but that's, the part that I can tell you, some of the things that they have that are capability wise, that they can do on orbit, when they have any of these types of events. Thanks, Jeff. And we can get you some more info if you have additional follow ups. We'll go to, the gentleman right next to her.

Thank you very much. Tariq Malik for Space. com. I think for Jeff, you just mentioned the need for focus and whatnot. Of course, because it's April Fool's Day coming up.

But by all accounts, it sounds like this has been a very smooth and, continual run up to the launch. And I'm just curious how you are ensuring that the team continues that vigilance and and what has been a very, staid and quiet countdown. I would say that I wouldn't necessarily, characterize that because it's quiet, that we're not still doing the same amount of rigor out in the field. We're just finding less things now than we had previously. I think at times you get to a point where you have found and corrected, as many things as maybe are available to you.

And so the things that we find now are quite small and, and much less significant than we had in the past. So I hope that's a really good sign. But we still have the same amount of, vigilance. We have the same procedures, the same people doing the same type of events, throughout 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And we've been working up to this.

And so we are still in the same posture, regardless of whether maybe the it looks like it's, it's quiet. People are still putting in the same amount of effort and working towards because, again, they know the significance of the mission and, and the people that were flying on it and that they're going to do the right thing to make sure that we're safe to do so. Thank you. We'll go over to then the third row. We'll go to the gentleman there in the middle.

Thanks so much. Mike Martin broke Wall Street Journal Jeff, kind of related what Terry just asked. It's been more than three years since Artemis one. Have you observed kind of in this process, any any jitters on, you know, different teams, any rustiness getting out there as the real thing unfolds? Yeah.

Thank you. We've been training since Artemis one for this time. Right. But we've also had to modify a lot of our procedures, hardware, equipment, training and other things to get to where we are. So, as we've worked through that, it has been a building process for sure.

We've seen that just in working through the orders and a number of items that we've picked up each time has as continuously gone down. When we got through the countdown demonstration test and the WDR two. And so I again, I would say if, if anything, we're learning, we're getting better. We're in, the ability for us to improve our procedures is at a point where I think we're at a really good state now, and almost at a steady state to where, we're where we need to be for certainly for this mission. And, we'll continue to improve that.

Artemis three is going to be a slightly different mission, but, we're already working towards that. We've got a lot of folks that are engaged in Artemis three, and we're taking what we've learned from Artemis two and going to be applying it. And that'll be another challenge too, as we work towards that. Thank you. We'll go then to the gentleman in that same row at the far end.

Charles, let's just having that just, I remember the Apollo 12 launch very well. And what happened, is there a, a concern that the, booster might lose its guidance if there's a similar lightning strike or the spacecraft might lose its platform, like what happened in Apollo 12? And if so, what are some, accommodations for that? So, I would say for the what we try to do, before we would launch, because, again, we create a lot of launch commit criteria to avoid that very circumstance. Right?

A lot of things came out of that event which have led us to where we are today for all of these requirements that we have, both on the range and for vehicle requirements and those other types of things that Mark can speak to, I'm sure, very, very eloquently. But, our, our systems and our vehicles are very robust. We have redundancy and capability throughout. If there were, any type of event that we needed to, to work through, it's it's really hard to gauge exactly what that would mean. But all of our systems are, are hardened against various events.

They have to fly in space. Many of these right, where we have to worry about solar events and other types of, high energy events. So, the vehicle is as robust, I think, as it needs to be. And we have the, the number of systems, and robustness in it by having, redundancy to allow us to, to weather many types of different things. And I don't know if you want to talk about the criteria on what's changed or not, but nothing to add, really.

Well, okay. Thank you both. All right. We'll take then. The one question there all the way in the back.

Hey, Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR. This is for Jeff. So you've been involved in a lot of shuttle launches, but this one could go to the moon, and I'm just wondering, like, does it feel different for you? I mean, you look like you were probably a kid during the days of Apollo. Like, would, you know, ten year old?

You have thought that you'd be involved in a in a moon launch like this. Do you think about that at all or how does it actually feel? I mean, there's all the things you got to check off and do, but are are you guys thinking about the moon? Have you been looking at the moon at night and thinking about that at all? I'll just say from my personal experience, I have.

Right. I try to walk every day in the morning and, and I look up at the moon quite regularly, thinking about this mission and the upcoming missions that are going to be, coming right down stream. So, I'm really excited about this. I'm excited going to the moon. I'm excited about establishing a presence there.

It's something that I have had a desire for, for for a great many years. And then not to get, humans back out to Mars as well. That's another thing that I had. I fortunately, I had the ability to work, on some of the studies that we did in the 90s on the, on the Mars missions and things. And so I have been looking for human exploration of the solar system for a very long time.

And it's part of the reason that I'm actually still here is to to continue to put humans into space and to get us back into this launch mode that we are, so that we can continue to explore and establish, a moon base and then, continue to work towards getting to Mars. Thank you. We'll go to the other side. We'll go right here in the second row to the lady right there. Hi.

Brandy Campbell with Fox Weather. I have a question about whether, of course, from Mark. Just with your past experience with issuing these forecasts, when you have a similar forecast, what we are dealing with that 20% chance of a weather violation, do y'all normally get through that two hour window or just the window and have a successful launch? What have you experienced in the past? Well, of course the forecast is perfect, so it's a 1 in 5 chance of us getting a weather violation.

If we look at all the data, over time it comes out to being pretty close. But again, each countdown is different. So sometimes there's 20% that end up being no go the entirety of the launch window and there's others, and most of them don't have a violation. So pretty close to that. Four and five times, you know, and and again in a pattern like this where we have a moist onshore flow, I would be definitely, thinking that will probably, have showers around whether or not they get into the flight through path of the rocket.

That's a whole other story. We're good because this time of year and this pattern doesn't lead to a lot of robust thunderstorms. So that does help us. It also eliminates a lot of lightning launch commit criteria. So that works in our favor as well.

Thank you. We'll go over there to the gentleman in the, blue shirt and the blue collar shirt. Hi. Pedro, pull out the phone. SpaceX.

For which? Brazil. You'll talk a lot about the weather for launch, but I would like to know about the weather for splashdown. And if it's their chance to move the launch day, due to a bad weather or for the, the splashdown. I know we are a lot of days for splashdown, but.

And the weather can improve or get worse, so I wouldn't understand. Well, what is the backup scenario for that? Do you want to check the weather first? Okay. Yeah, I can speak a little bit to the weather.

So we're not at the 45th Weather Squadron. We're not specifically issuing a forecast for the ascent corridor or the Pacific here. We do have a team of of forecasters that will be deployed out to the Pacific for the recovery. So they'll be watching that as well and assisting in all of that. But really for us here on day a launch, like the only thing, downrange that we're really looking at other than thunderstorms and the associated clouds and, and the lightning launch commit criteria would be what, those, low level Orion abort winds would be on that that corridor there.

We have colleagues, out in Houston, space flight meteorology group that are assessing risk profiles going out across the Atlantic on ascent far beyond the cape of. Jeff, I'll let you speak to the rest of it. Yeah. And the, and the flight team, is part of that, assessment that would be done on day of launch, about the capabilities that we would have for, any kind of contingency landing and abort one surround or any type of other event, and that falls into the launch day decision process as to whether, you know, we're going to make an attempt or not. We do have quite a bit of flexibility, on based on weather in the Pacific, for those various scenarios.

So, but that is, essentially, a launch date decision and would be part of the overall decision on whether we tank or whether we launch, based on those, those that weather criteria that, coming out of the flight control team. Thank you. We'll go to the gentleman there in the back is Steven Clarke. The Steven Clarke. Yeah.

So, I am Steven Clarke with Ars Technica. Following up on that last question, have you heard anything from SMG about how the ascent corridor is looking? You know, that's not within your responsibility, but what are you hearing, about the downrange weather in the Atlantic and also for for Jeff? Just want to make sure I know the trajectory and the azimuth changes day to day is actually change, like minute to minute within the launch window. And how do you manage that?

If so, with with, you know, different conditions of different azimuth snakes and. Yeah. So yeah the the azimuth does change, you know, minute by minute. Luckily it's a fairly small slice. So that was something we dealt with with Artemis one as well.

That impacts us because of course, from a radar and launch lightning commit criteria, that sort of thing, where we have to use those trajectories to decide whether or not a cloud would actually pose a threat wherever it is during the actual countdown. What was the first part of your question, please? Again? Sorry, just what do you what are you hearing from SMG about the ascent? Yeah.

Sorry. Right now, a weather appears to be very much go. The threat that I saw in the last was, under 9%, total along the total ascent corridor, so that's really good. And in fact, you know, the other aspects show decent weather continuing through a lot of the launch period. So having high pressure set up across the North Atlantic this time of year works in our favor.

Thank you. We'll go over to Ida right there. Hi. Is there a defining moment in the countdown when the reality sets that humans are returning to deep space? And how do you experience that as a leader in this mission?

So for me, once we get inside of ten minutes and counting, that's where it starts, because we all, on the launch team at that particular point know that it's become real, for all of us. We also know that we all need to be prepared to do everything we can to continue through that or to take any action that would be required. But it really starts to get real for me when we're inside of one minute and when we're inside of one minute. To me, I feel very confident and very, very hopeful that we're going to go, but that's when the first time I think I ever actually think to myself that we really are going to make it that day, because I'm always thinking about what's going to not let us go. Right.

Because that's part of my job is to, stop the clock if we need to. So when I get inside of one, it doesn't mean that we're free, because that's really a dangerous time as well. But, but that's when it's really starts to hit home that, you know, we're really got a shot at making it today. And, and I know a lot of people are thinking the same thing because you can hear a pin drop in that firing room as you count from ten down to zero. And then, after that, though, it may get a little bit noisier at some point, but.

Thank you. All right. We'll go back to the phone. We have Kenneth Chang with The New York Times again. And Ken had hung up at this time.

All right. We will then take one more question here in the room. I see I don't believe in your question yet, sir. Hi, there. I'm Alec with the Globe and Mail.

I wonder if you could just say something about the close out of the capsule where backup crew members are going to be in the capsule? I think that's this evening. But could you clarify that part of the operation? We have two time frames when the backup crew members, and we'll have one at each of the intervals, when we're doing the final closeouts, of the, the, the capsule before tanking, we'll have one of our astronaut support personnel in there, working, final configurations for the crew switch list and a few other things. At that point, and then on our actual closeout crew team, it's a five person team.

We do have another backup crew member. Andre is on that one, and, Jenny's on the first one, but, he'll be on that team, and he is responsible. He's one of the two people. We also have an insertion technician. Bales.

Does that work? That is responsible for strapping the flight crew in, during that time frame and getting the crew module all set up at the very, very end. And then, when they're done, they, they come outside. But, he'll be inside of the capsule in that time. The flight crew insertion at the end takes about 30 minutes or so.

Once the flight crews there, they do a little work before that. So he'll be in there before that time frame as well. And at the very end, yeah, it's, it's pretty it's pretty good to watch what those guys are doing. Thank you. I don't see any other hands in the room.

All right, well, then, with that, we will wrap up today's briefing. Thank you to our panelists for taking the time to answer all of our questions and to the media here in the room for asking your questions. Artemis two is scheduled to launch at 6:24 p. m. Eastern Time tomorrow from Launch Pad 39 B that's the opening of a two hour launch window.

You can watch our 24 over seven live coverage beginning at 7:45 a. m. and you can, I think, see on your screen below how to watch nasa. gov/ways to watch. Thanks and go Artemis.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from NASA. NASA material is generally not copyrighted and is in the public domain.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.