Cape canaveral: NASA has announced a delay for its historic Artemis II mission, pushing the launch target from February to March 2026 after encountering multiple technical issues during a critical pre-flight test. "The team continues to impress me with their thoughtfulness and focus on mission success," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "Safety remains our top priority. We will launch when we're ready." According to Oman News Agency, the decision follows a "wet dress rehearsal" conducted at Kennedy Space Center, a full-scale practice involving the loading of approximately 700,000 gallons of super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. During the test, engineers identified a liquid hydrogen leak at an interface on the rocket's core stage. Additional issues included intermittent communication dropouts with ground teams and weather-related impacts on some monitoring cameras. "With the conclusion of the wet dress rehearsal today, we are m oving off the February launch window," Nelson confirmed via the social media platform X. "We are now targeting March for the earliest possible launch of Artemis II." The mission aims to send a crew of four-NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen-on a journey around the Moon, marking the first human voyage to lunar distance since Apollo 17 in 1972. The available launch period extends through April. Due to the schedule change, the astronaut crew, who had entered a standard pre-flight health stabilization quarantine in Texas, will now be released from that protocol. They will return to full training as teams work to resolve the technical anomalies. The rehearsal involved coordinated efforts from launch controllers at Kennedy Space Center, mission control in Houston, and engineers across other NASA centers. The agency emphasized that such tests are designed to uncover and resolve issues before committing to flight.