Artemis-1 On Her First Night of Wet Dress Rehearsal, April 1, 2022

The sun sets on Artemis1 and the first night of its Wet Dress Rehearsal begins.

All was quiet at that moment, and it was incredible to watch SLS start to glow brighter and brighter as the darkness fell behind her.

The day was a stormy one, starting with a tornado warning around 830-9am in Cocoa Beach, which is not far at all from Kennedy Space Center and Pad LC-39B. I was not terribly worried, however, because tornadoes almost always track northeast and that meant it would be offshore before it go to the launch pad. Fortunately, the warning was much ado about not very much and there was no damage to speak of at the beaches.

In between storms (it rained again that afternoon and that night as well) SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying Transporter 4 at 12:24:17 local time, and later, after an afternoon of steely-grey skies and more rain, the clouds parted a little bit to put some color in the gloaming as the sun set.

Artemis herself seemed to grow brighter and brighter as the sky turned to black. Much brighter and taller than the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, the rocket shone like a beacon into the night. It’s clearly visible from all over the Titusville-Cocoa area, especially on bridges or on roads that give a view up the rivers.

Saturn V’s were the same, brightly lit and easy to see from nearly everywhere around town. It was not only a working spacecraft, but also a symbol that never failed to catch the eye. And given that a lot of NASA workers and their associated contractors contributing to the project live here, Artemis is now what the brightly lit Apollo vehicles were: a reminder of what the mission was.