NASA's Second Artemis II Fueling Test Went Off Without a Hitch

NASA's second attempt to run a "wet test" of the Space Launch System (SLS) for its Artemis II mission was successful. Following a failure of some seals during the first attempt earlier this month, NASA pushed the launch back to March to conduct additional tests. As of Thursday, those tests are complete, and they appear to have gone relatively smoothly.

Artemis II was originally planned to launch as early as Feb. 6, but during the wet test ahead of that, hydrogen fuel leaked enough to cause major delays in fueling. The faux countdown was scrubbed with five minutes to go, as the hydrogen buildup was potentially dangerous. This time around, NASA replaced the seals and partially filled the tanks on Feb. 12 to test them. When that went well, it went ahead with its full wet test on Feb. 19, and that went well, too.

NASA was able to ...