NASA’s Epic Week: Moon Rocket Ready, Mars Life Clue, and an Interstellar Visitor
Artemis on the Fast Track – and a New Moon Race NASA’s Moon program reached a major milestone this week: engineers at Kennedy Space Center finished stacking the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for Artemis 2, placing the Orion crew capsule (nicknamed “Integrity”) atop the booster space.com. “The towering rocket…has come together,” NASA announced, after hoisting Orion onto SLS inside the Vehicle Assembly Building space.com. This completed rocket – set to launch four astronauts around the Moon – was even exempted from the ongoing federal shutdown, underscoring Artemis 2’s high priority space.com. The mission is targeting February 2026 for liftoff, which would mark
