In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
NASA is preparing to send astronauts back into deep space for the first time in 53 years with its Artemis II Moon mission, though a hydrogen leak discovered during final testing has pushed the historic launch out of its February window.
The agency said it will skip February’s launch opportunity after teams at Kennedy Space Center halted a full fueling simulation, known as a wet dress rehearsal, when sensors detected a leak near the base of the 322-foot Space Launch System rocket. Controllers stopped the countdown with just minutes remaining.
NASA now considers early March the earliest realistic time frame for liftoff, with launch opportunities between March 6 and March 9 and additional backup dates later in the spring.
“For me, the big takeaway was we got a chance for the rocket to talk to us, and it did just that,” John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis II mission management team, said during a Feb. 3 press briefing.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the delay reflects the purpose of the rehearsal.
“With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges,” Isaacman wrote on X. “These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former NASA astronaut, described the scrub as routine in a social media video, noting that hydrogen leaks are a known complication in rocket fueling.
In case you missed it: the Artemis II launch for this week was scrubbed. Don't be too worried, though. Launches get pushed back all the time.
— Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) February 6, 2026
For now, stay tuned for the another try in early March! pic.twitter.com/WqMmzMKtE9
“This is normal. These things happen,” Kelly said. “They’ll get it fixed. There’ll be another attempt. It should be a crazy show, seeing humans going to the Moon … not something we’ve done in a while.”
First humans back to deep space in 53 years
When Artemis II flies, a four-person crew will travel roughly 4,700 miles beyond the far side of the Moon before returning to Earth after a 10-day mission. Astronauts will ride aboard NASA’s Orion capsule, marking the first time the spacecraft and its life support systems carry humans.
The mission will not land on the lunar surface. Instead, it is designed to validate the rocket, navigation, and crew systems needed for future missions, including Artemis III, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade.
“This is the first deep space exploration with humans since 1972,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “It’s completely new hardware. It’s the first time humans will have launched on the SLS rocket. It’s the first time the Orion life support systems will have been used in space. There are a lot of important firsts in this mission.”
Even conceptually familiar goals, he said, are functionally new after a half-century gap.
“You’d have to go all the way back to Apollo to get a comparable mission,” Dreier said. “We’re basically reinventing the wheel in a lot of these technologies.”
The mission also carries inherent risk because it marks the first crewed flight of new hardware.
“It’s a first-time launch,” Dreier said. “You’ll learn a lot, and hopefully what you learn won’t be painful, and what you learn will be fixable without having to reinvent anything along the way.”
The Artemis II crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The mission will also mark the first time a woman, a Black astronaut, and a non-American astronaut travel into deep space.
Dreier said human missions carry symbolic weight that robotic exploration alone cannot replicate.
“Space is trying to kill you all the time,” he said. “It’s the most unforgiving environment you can imagine. Being able to send people there is a symbol of engineering capability, technological ability, and organizational ability. It’s a way a nation demonstrates what it’s capable of.”
A stepping stone for lunar science
For scientists, the mission represents a foundation for rebuilding sustained human exploration of the Moon.
“No humans have been to the Moon during my lifetime, and that is true for most of the population now,” said Brett Denevi, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and a lead scientist on Artemis III, speaking to the Washington Examiner.
“This is a huge milestone. This mission matters for the progress it represents and as a step toward having people explore and conduct science on the Moon as a regular occurrence.”
Denevi said Artemis II is already shaping how NASA prepares for future surface missions by testing training systems, data pipelines, and science operations infrastructure.
“What the Artemis II science team is learning is already benefiting our planning for Artemis III,” she said. “Each step forward in the Artemis program will expand the scope of science that can be done.”
Future missions will target the Moon’s south polar region, where permanently shadowed craters may contain ancient water ice and rocks dating back more than 4 billion years. Scientists believe those materials could help reconstruct the early history of the solar system and the environment in which life emerged on Earth.
Delays, risk, and political durability
Artemis has faced years of cost overruns and schedule shifts, raising periodic questions about long-term political support. Dreier said the program has recently crossed a threshold where cancellation is unlikely barring a catastrophic failure.
“I believe we’ve been through the worst of it,” he said. “The political support is about as rock solid as you get for a program right now.”
The Artemis architecture began under President Donald Trump’s first term and was carried forward largely unchanged by the Biden administration, an unusual level of bipartisan continuity for a major federal initiative
Artemis is the first post-Apollo return-to-the-Moon effort to survive a presidential transition intact, Dreier noted.
“Any successful long-term human spaceflight project has to extend beyond one administration,” he said. “It has to be a national effort, not a party effort, or it won’t continue.”
Trump has reaffirmed a goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2028.
According to Dreier, a delay of months, or even up to a year, would not necessarily derail Artemis III because the pacing factor is the privately built lunar lander, not the SLS rocket itself. A major technical failure, though, could force NASA back to the drawing board.
“It really depends on what the issue is,” he said. “If they’re minor, that’s not a problem. If they’re major, that becomes a very different conversation.”
NASA officials emphasize that wet dress rehearsals are specifically designed to uncover problems before astronauts board.
“When you’re dealing with hydrogen, it’s a small molecule, it’s highly energetic,” Honeycutt said. “We’ll figure it out.”
WHAT IS THE NASA ARTEMIS PROGRAM?
If successful, Artemis II would serve as a reminder of NASA’s deep-space ambitions and the country’s ability to execute them.
“It would be a huge public relations win,” Dreier said. “A reminder of what NASA is capable of.”
For now, we’ll just have to wait another month or so to see it in action, but a month is but a fraction of the 53 years we’ve been waiting to see a return to the Moon.
