Watch NASA’s Artemis 2 moon rocket on the launch pad with this 24-hour livestream

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NASA’s next moon rocket is on the launch pad for testing and you can follow its progress live.

The agency broadcasts a 24/7 livestream showing its Artemis 2 Space Launch System (SLS) at Launch Complex-39B at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. You can watch the livestream on YouTube or in the window below. The rocket will generally be visible regardless of the time of day or night, although sometimes fog rolling in from the nearby Atlantic Ocean will obscure the view.

Artemis 2 is expected to blast off from the Space Coast no earlier than February 6, sending four astronauts around the moon and return to Earth: Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist) from NASA, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Glover will be the first person of color to leave low earth orbitwhile Koch will be the first woman and Hansen the first Canadian.

The astronauts entered quarantine on Friday (January 23), which is standard procedure two weeks before a penciled-in launch date. But, as NASA continues to point out, this date could be moved. SLS arrived safely at Launch Pad 39B after a 12-hour deployment journey on January 17. The rocket still has to pass several crates at the padincluding a crucial “wet dress rehearsal,” during which the rocket will be refueled and launch operations tested.

NASA aims to complete this refueling test on February 2, just four days before launch. The predecessor Artemis 1 However, the mission took several months to reach this stage. Artemis 1 was the first mission for SLS and just the second for the Orion capsule (which came and went from Earth’s orbit in 2014 on an uncrewed mission atop another rocket). Artemis 1 required at least four wet dress rehearsal attempts before the agency considered the rocket ready for launch, but everything ultimately went well; he managed to send Orion into lunar orbit and return to Earth at the end of 2022.

During a press conference On Jan. 17, Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said the team had implemented several changes to procedures and design since Artemis 1’s wet dress rehearsal campaign, which could allow for a smoother simulated countdown this time around.

The 10-day Artemis 2 mission will test the SLS rocket and Orion in the first-ever crewed Artemis mission. In fact, astronauts will spend about a day in Earth orbit doing a detailed overview of the systems before embarking on the crucial “translunar injection” that will send them around the Moon. The goal is to prepare for a moon landing with Artemis 3Astronauts, who have not yet been named, in 2027 or 2028.

If Artemis 2 does not launch as planned on February 6, backup opportunities are available in February, March, and April. NASA has stressed that it will only launch the quartet of astronauts when all systems are ready, because safety comes before any schedule.