Video: Orion flight preps

The four astronauts will spend more than nine days onboard their Orion spacecraft and is poised to pass the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39B is scheduled for Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 p.m. EDT (2224 UTC).

Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, in pre-flight medical quarantine at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, had hope to fly to Florida Tuesday to begin final preparations for launch. Instead, they will remain in Houston and rejoin family, friends and co-workers.

The Biden administration supports continuing NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts back to the moon, the White House said last week, without stating whether it will back away from the program’s already-in-doubt schedule for a lunar landing by the end of 2024.