2026-03-12T19:02:00-0400 / CBS新闻
NASA周四宣布，该机构计划下周将其阿尔忒弥斯II号月球火箭重新运至其海边发射台，为这枚巨大的助推器做好准备，最早可能于4月1日进行一次推迟但具有历史意义的飞行，将四名宇航员送往月球进行为期九天的绕月旅行。
在为期两天的飞行准备审查结束时，”所有接受调查的团队都投票决定’可以发射并将阿尔忒弥斯II号绕月飞行，在我们前往发射台之前，还需完成一些工作’，”NASA总部探索系统开发副署长洛里·格莱兹（Lori Glaze）表示。
“提醒大家，每次谈到这次飞行，我们都会强调，这是一次试飞，而且并非没有风险。但我们的团队和硬件已经准备就绪。”
（图片说明：NASA肯尼迪航天中心车辆装配大楼内的太空发射系统火箭档案照片。NASA/Frank Michaux）
根据不断变化的月球和地球位置，以及复杂的任务目标组合，NASA必须在4月6日前发射阿尔忒弥斯II号，否则飞行将再推迟约一个月。如果4月1日发射，预计东部夏令时下午6:24发射，九天后在太平洋溅落。
NASA工作人员原本希望在2月初发射太空发射系统火箭、猎户座载人舱及其四名乘客——阿尔忒弥斯II号指挥官里德·怀斯曼（Reid Wiseman）、维克多·格洛弗（Victor Glover）、克里斯蒂娜·科赫（Christina Koch）和加拿大宇航员杰里米·汉森（Jeremy Hansen）。
但这一期待已久的飞行因氢燃料泄漏而推迟，最近又因火箭上面级推进剂增压系统问题而推迟。
氢泄漏问题通过更换连接燃料管线到火箭底部的脐带系统中可疑的密封件在发射台得到解决。但工程师无法在发射台接触到上面级，整个火箭必须被运回NASA的车辆装配大楼进行维修。
进入这个巨大的设施后，技术人员展开了上面级通道平台，工程师很快发现氦气快速断开接头中有一个错位的密封件。加压氦气用于通过推进系统推动推进剂，并帮助排空和干燥推进剂管线。
更换错位的密封件解决了增压系统问题，工作人员随后进行了必要的工作，更换了火箭自毁系统、捆绑式助推器和SLS两个级别的电池。他们还为猎户座舱的发射中止系统充电。
这项工作几乎已完成，NASA管理人员表示，火箭应该准备好于下周四晚上开始12小时的滚动到39B发射台。
“我为团队迅速查明根本原因并使我们重新处于准备状态而感到非常自豪，”阿尔忒弥斯地面系统经理肖恩·奎因（Shawn Quinn）表示。”到目前为止，车辆装配大楼的处理进展非常顺利。”
在总结飞行准备审查时，格莱兹表示任务风险是讨论的主题，但她和NASA阿尔忒弥斯任务管理团队主席约翰·霍尼卡特（John Honeycutt）在周四的新闻发布会上拒绝提供任何实际数字。
上周发布的一份报告中，NASA监察长办公室表示，基于SpaceX着陆器的假设使用，该机构对阿尔忒弥斯月球任务的”风险阈值”在月球运行期间预计为1/40，而整个任务风险从发射到溅落被定为1/30。报告称，阿波罗机组人员面临的死亡风险为1/10。
阿尔忒弥斯II号不是月球着陆任务（这将意味着整体风险较低），但它将只是2022年一次无人驾驶试飞之后SLS火箭和猎户座舱的首次载人飞行。
格莱兹和霍尼卡特都表示，由于飞行历史短且发射间隔长，很难对阿尔忒弥斯II号任务进行现实的整体风险评估。
“我认为有时我们会被误导，认为这些数字能真正告诉我们非常重要的东西，”格莱兹说。”我认为它们有价值。我认为我们可以在相对意义上衡量什么更危险或更少危险。
“但我同意约翰的看法，在这种情况下，这不是首次飞行，但我们也不是处于常规（发射）节奏中。因此，我们的风险肯定比持续飞行的飞行系统要高得多。但我和他一样，实际上不会给它一个具体数字。”
NASA阿尔忒弥斯计划在特朗普政府第一任期内建立，旨在让宇航员重返月球表面。原定目标是2024年，但预算短缺、新冠疫情和其他各种问题引发了多次推迟，最终将首次登月推迟到2028年。
尽管NASA两周前修改了近期发射序列，情况仍然如此。和之前一样，该机构计划最早于4月1日发射阿尔忒弥斯II号机组人员，进行SLS火箭和猎户座舱的首次载人试飞。
这次飞行之后，明年将进行另一项任务——阿尔忒弥斯III号，届时低地球轨道上的猎户座舱内的宇航员将与SpaceX和蓝色起源正在建造的一个或两个月球着陆器对接。这将使NASA能够在尝试实际登月之前测试航天器和程序。
如果这些飞行顺利，该机构希望在2028年发射至少一次，可能两次登月飞行，使用可用的着陆器。之后，NASA计划每年进行一次登月飞行，以开发最终飞往火星所需的程序和基础设施。
但火星目前只是一个纯粹的愿望目标。短期内，阿尔忒弥斯II号是NASA关注的中心。
与阿尔忒弥斯I号一样，阿尔忒弥斯II号猎户座载人飞船不会进入绕月轨道。相反，它将遵循”自由返回”飞行路径，携带机组人员绕月球远端飞行，利用月球引力将其轨迹弯向地球，在发射九天后在太平洋溅落。
因此，他们计划在任务的第一天检查猎户座在低地球轨道和高地球轨道的飞行控制、通信、导航和生命支持系统，然后最终前往月球。
假设4月1日按时发射，机组人员将在离月球表面约4,100英里的最近距离飞行，从而比任何其他人旅行得更远——约252,800英里。
NASA ready for another shot at Artemis II moon mission with possible April 1 launch
2026-03-12T19:02:00-0400 / CBS News
NASA plans to haul its Artemis II moon rocket back out to its seaside launch pad next week to ready the huge booster for blastoff as early as April 1 on a delayed-but-historic flight to send four astronauts on a nine-day trip around the moon, the agency announced Thursday.
At the conclusion of a two-day flight readiness review, “all the teams polled ‘go’ to launch and fly Artemis II around the moon, pending completion of some of the work before we roll out to the launch pad,” said Lori Glaze, associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters.
“Just a reminder to everybody, we talk about it every time we talk about this flight, it’s a test flight, and it is not without risk. But our team and our hardware are ready.”
A file photo of the Space Launch System rocket inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA/Frank Michaux
Based on the ever-changing positions of the moon and Earth, along with a complex mix of mission objectives, NASA must launch Artemis II by April 6, or the flight will slip another month or so. For an April 1 launch, liftoff is expected at 6:24 p.m. EDT, followed by splashdown in the Pacific Ocean nine days later.
NASA workers had hoped to launch the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion crew capsule and its four passengers — Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — in early February.
But the long-awaited flight was delayed by hydrogen fuel leaks and, more recently, by problems with the rocket’s upper stage propellant pressurization system.
The hydrogen leaks were fixed at the launch pad by replacing suspect seals in the umbilical system that attaches fuel lines to the base of the rocket. But engineers could not access the upper stage at the launch pad, and the entire rocket had to be hauled back to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.
Once inside the cavernous facility, upper-stage access platforms were extended and engineers quickly found a displaced seal in a helium quick-disconnect fitting. Pressurized helium is used to push propellants through the propulsion system and to help drain and dry propellant lines.
Replacing the displaced seal fixed the pressurization system problem, and crews went ahead with needed work to replace batteries in the rocket’s self destruct system, strap-on boosters and both SLS stages. They also charged batteries in the Orion capsule’s launch abort system.
That work is virtually complete, and NASA managers said the rocket should be ready for the start of its 12-hour roll to pad 39B next Thursday evening.
“I was very proud of the team and the work that they did to quickly understand the root cause and get us back in a posture to roll back out,” said Shawn Quinn, manager of Artemis ground systems. “So far, the VAB processing has gone very well.”
Summing up the flight readiness review, Glaze said mission risk was a topic of discussion, but she and John Honeycutt, chair of NASA’s Artemis mission management team, declined to provide any actual numbers during a Thursday news conference.
In a report released last week, NASA’s Office of Inspector General said the agency’s “risk threshold” for an Artemis moon mission, based on the presumed use of a SpaceX lander, was expected to be in the realm of 1-in-40 during lunar operations, while the overall mission risk was put at 1-in-30 from launch to splashdown. The report said the risk of death faced by Apollo crews was 1-in-10.
Artemis II is not a lunar landing mission, which would imply lower risk overall, but it will still be only the first piloted flight of an SLS rocket and Orion capsule after a single unpiloted test flight in 2022.
Citing the short flight history and the long gap between launches, Glaze and Honeycutt both said coming up with a realistic overall risk assessment for the Artemis II mission is difficult.
“I think sometimes we get tricked into believing that those numbers are somehow really telling us something critically important,” Glaze said. “I think they’re valuable. I think we can do things in a relative sense to measure what is more risky or less risky.
“But I agree with John that in this sense, it’s not the first flight, but we’re also not in a regular (launch) cadence. So we definitely have significantly more risk than a flight system that’s flying all the time. But I’m with him, I wouldn’t actually put a number on it.”
NASA’s Artemis program, established during the first Trump administration, is aimed at returning astronauts to the surface of the moon. The original target was 2024, but budget shortfalls, the COVID pandemic and a variety of other issues triggered repeated delays, eventually pushing the first moon landing to 2028.
That’s still the case even though NASA revised the near-term launch sequence two weeks ago. As before, the agency plans to launch the Artemis II crew on the first piloted test flight of an SLS rocket and Orion capsule as early as April 1.
That flight will now be followed by an additional mission next year — Artemis III — in which astronauts aboard an Orion capsule in low-Earth orbit will rendezvous and dock with one or both moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. That will allow NASA to test the spacecraft and procedures in space before attempting an actual landing.
If those flights go well, the agency hopes to launch at least one and possibly two lunar landing flights in 2028 using whichever landers are available. After that, NASA plans to launch one moon landing flight per year to develop the procedures and infrastructure needed for eventual flights to Mars.
But Mars is a purely aspirational goal goal at present. In the near term, Artemis II is the center of NASA’s attention.
Like Artemis I, the Artemis II Orion crew ship will not go into orbit around the moon. Instead, it will follow a “free return” flight path that will carry the crew around the far side of the moon, using lunar gravity to bend its trajectory back toward Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean nine days after launch.
As such, they plan to spend the first full day of their mission checking out the Orion’s flight control, communications, navigation and life support systems in low and high Earth orbit before finally setting off for the moon.
Assuming an on-time launch April 1, the crew will fly within about 4,100 miles of the moon’s surface at closest approach and in so doing travel farther from Earth than any other humans — around 252,800 miles.
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