The Artemis 2 mission is on track to be launched in early April, NASA said. Astronauts will fly around the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, should the rocket take off on April 1. It was set to launch earlier this month, but a helium leak was discovered, and it had to return to the Vehicle Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral for repairs.

NASA said the problem has now been fixed and Artemis 2 will be rolled back to the Florida launchpad on March 19 ahead of the launch. The rocket’s crew is made up of astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. They will be the first people to fly on the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft

Their 10-day mission involves travelling around the far side of the Moon – the side we never see – and back to Earth.

John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis 2 Mission Management Team, stressed the risks associated with such a journey, but praised the team for their “outstanding job”.

He said: “We want to be sure that we’re thinking about everything that can possibly go wrong, and have we assessed and adjudicated all the risks to put us in the best posture to be successful.

“If you look at the data over time, over the lifespan of building new rockets, the data would show you that one out of two is successful. You’re only successful 50% of the time. I think we’re in a much better position than that.

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“We do an outstanding job of understanding the risk, buying down the risk, mitigating the risk, and putting together controls to manage the risk.”