counting down. the art miss rocket is finally on the launch pad ready to fly for the first time on monday. it s no longer the apollo generation. it s the artemis generation and that brings new discoveries. i m pamela brown in washington. you re live in the cnn newsroom. well, it s nasa s long overdue return to the moon, and t-minus just a few hours until hopefully launchtime of the u.s. space agency s most powerful rocket. the program is called artemis, the first phase blasting off in the morning, unmanned and setting the stage for a manned landing on the lunar surface once again. just a short time ago vice president kamala harris touched down in central florida. she and the second gentleman planning to watch the liftoff in person. as the head of the space council i can tell you i m so proud of what is happening in terms of our space program and the leadership that the united states is providing to the world. the arte myos program is the beginning of the next er
spoke to a small group at an outdoor event in massachusetts. you see here he shook some hands with people after the speech, exchanged a few words. the first lady, she tested negative this morning. she attended events with the president and the first lady of ukraine earlier this week. mrs. biden spoke to reporters about the president s condition. watch. i talked to him just a few minutes ago. he s doing fine. he s feeling good. i tested negative this morning. i am going to keep my schedule. i am, according to cdc guidelines, i m keeping masked. cnn white house correspondent mj lee is with us now. so, mj, what s the latest? reporter: any minute now, we should be seeing white house press secretary karen jean-pierre and the white house covid coordinator, dr. ashish jha give us an update. you showed the tweet from the president earlier saying that he is doing great. we know, of course, that he tested positive for covid this morning, so let me just walk you through a timeline
kai kaitlan, the white house does not tell the press corps when the president is tested. . they tell us when but not how often. so we will get updates when he goes on a foreign trip, as he did left week to the middle east with us. they told us he tested negative departing for that. when we tried to pin them down on how often, is it every day, every other day, they have left gray area. it s a question for this week. look, he took a test on tuesday. it was negative. he did not take a test it appears yesterday before he went to this event in somerset, massachusetts. and today was the one that was positive and why the press secretary got that note. a few things stood out which is where they said we knew this was go egg to were that. they have been bracing for this. there have been actual close contacts and close situations, close calls where he was at an event where the irish srb was. secretary of state blinken tested positive. and now they say they don t know where they got it
symptoms the president is experiencing are very mild. we ll get an update shortly on the president s condition. complete coverage now, dr. marc siegel standing by. john: jacqui heinrich is live on the north lawn. the white house has sent out the first picture of the president, from some time today? we are to assume it s from today. white house is making an effort to show the president is still carrying out his duties in isolation despite testing positive for covid-19. he tweets, folks, i m doing great. thanks for your concern. just called senator casey, congressman cartwright and a mayor and scranton cousins send my regret for missing our event today, keeping busy, exclamation point. his symptoms began last night with a runny nose, fatigue and dry cough. when he went to bed he felt fine but did not sleep well, woke up this morning and tested positive. the white house physician says he s talking the antiviral drug paxlovid, has f.d.a. emergency use authorization for high r