NASA will not roll out its first moon-bound megarocket to the launch pad until March, delaying the launch of the Artemis 1 mission once further.

Officials from the agency will hold a press conference at 12 p.m. on Wednesday (Feb. 2) to discuss the decision. NASA will broadcast audio of the event on NASA TV at 1700 EST (1700 GMT), and you can listen live here on Space.com courtesy of the agency. The agency did, however, provide an initial justification for the trip to the moon's postponement.

"While the teams are not working any major issues, NASA has added additional time to complete closeout activities inside the VAB [Vehicle Assembly Building] prior to rolling the rocket out for the first time," agency officials wrote in a statement.

After a major testing procedure in late February, NASA had planned to launch Artemis 1 sometime in March; the agency has not released a revised estimate for when Artemis 1 may blast off from its Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Artemis 1 will be an unmanned trip of NASA's new Orion spacecraft around the moon for a week to test the agency's readiness to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972. In a long-awaited milestone for NASA, the Orion capsule will be launched by the first Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket.

If Artemis 1 goes smoothly this year, a second mission would carry four people around the moon, followed by a third mission that will land a crew at the lunar south pole. Those flights are planned to take place between 2024 and 2025.

However, NASA still has a long way to go before those flights can take off. The focus right now, according to the NASA, is on final integrated tests on the SLS-Orion pair.

According to the statement, Tom Whitmeyer, the deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, Mike Bolger, the Exploration Ground Systems program manager at KSC in Florida, and Mike Sarafin, the mission manager for Artemis 1, will discuss the process during today's news conference.

When the Artemis 1 megarocket arrives at KSC's Launch Pad 39B, the next phase will be a wet dress rehearsal, which will simulate every step of the launch, including the rocket's fueling.

After that procedure is completed, NASA will announce a target launch date; the rocket must also roll back inside the Vehicle Assembly Building for final checks before blasting off.