NASA will roll Artemis 2 moon rocket back to the launch pad on March 20

NASA needs to wait one more day to roll its moon rocket back to the launchpad, but that shouldn't affect when it launches.

The Artemis 2 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has been inside NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida since its rollback from its launchpad last month. The agency had been gearing up for a March flight around the moon, but prelaunch tests revealed maintenance requirements engineers could only address back in the hangar.

Now, the agency is planning to roll SLS back to the pad at Launch Complex-39B (LC-39B) on March 20 — a one-day delay from its previous March 19 target. The culprit this time can be traced to an electrical harness for the flight termination system in need of a quick replacement. The work on said harness is already complete, but added just enough work to NASA engineers' pre-rollout checklist to push the rocket's transportation back to LC-39B by 24 hours.