NASA Artemis II Launch Date: What Is Artemis Mission To Moon? US Defence Stocks Rally, Know All Details Here

NASA is expecting its Artemis II mission launch in March, which was earlier expected in February. On February 3rd, NASA carried out an early wet dress rehearsal of its Artemis II test flight, which is designed in a way to identify any issues and resolve them ahead of the launch. NASA's Artemis campaign is to explore moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers.

Following the news, majority of US defence stocks rallied with exception of Lockheed Martin which is the fourth largest defence company in the world.

NASA Artemis II Launch Date:

As per the latest notification by NASA, engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives. To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.

Moving off a February launch window also means the Artemis II astronauts will be released from quarantine, which they entered in Houston on Jan. 21. As a result, they will not travel to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday as tentatively planned. Crew will enter quarantine again about two weeks out from the next targeted launch opportunity.

Further, NASA said, with March as the potential launch window, teams will fully review data from the test, mitigate each issue, and return to testing ahead of setting an official target launch date.

The astronauts who will carry the mission are Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

What Is Artemis II Mission:

Artemis is NASA's a long-term mission to explore moon. The space giant of the US, launched Artemis 1 in November 2022, where crews flew in an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to carry a month-long mission. This was an uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft around the Moon.

Meanwhile, Artemis II will be the first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft around the Moon.

After Artemis 2, NASA will further work on launching Artemis III which will take the first humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole. Lastly, Artemis IV is aimed at debuting humanity's first lunar space station, a larger, more powerful version of the SLS rocket, and new mobile launcher.

According to NASA FAQs, Earth's Moon is a 4.5-billion-year-old time capsule, pristinely preserved by the cold vacuum of space. The lunar samples returned during the Apollo Program dramatically changed our view of the solar system, and scientists continue to unlock new secrets from those samples.

US Defence Stocks:

After market hours on February 3rd, US defence stocks like RTX, which was formerly known as Raytheon Technologies Corporation, surged higher by 1.2% to end at $203.50 apiece. RTX is the world's largest defence company with market cap of $272.84 billion. This was followed by 1.5% surge in Honeywell who is the second largest defence player with market cap of $155.60 billion.

Other US defence stocks like Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and L3Harris Technologies surged by 3% to 3.5%. While Kratos Defence & Security rallied by a whopping 7.5%. However, Lockheed Martin stock price emerged as top loser with 1.22% downside to end at $628.26 apiece and holding a market cap of $145.37 billion.