Video: Orion EFT 1 animation

Despite protests from Texas lawmakers, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will manage the agency’s plans to build a lunar landing system that will carry the next man and the first woman to the surface of the moon in 2024, agency Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Friday.

Engineers plan to redesign part of the Orion capsule’s self-righting flotation system that only partially engaged as the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean following an orbital test flight in December, NASA officials said.

At the conclusion of a two-day flight readiness review, “all the teams polled ‘go’ to launch and fly Artemis 2 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.