The NASA space rocket that will launch Artemis III, the next moon mission, has been shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, “ultimately, paving the way for our first crewed missions to Mars,” a NASA administrator said.
The “core stage,” or the largest section, of the space agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket has been rolled out from the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The SLS will launch the crewed Artemis III mission in 2027.
The stage has left the facility for shipment to the Kennedy Space Center, “marking key progress on the path to the agency’s first crewed lunar landing mission to the Moon under the Artemis program in two years,” NASA said in a statement on Monday.
“Seeing this SLS rocket hardware roll out is a powerful reminder of our progress toward returning humans to the lunar surface,” Lori Glaze, the acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said in the statement from NASA.
Glaze noted: “This is the backbone of Artemis III. As it heads to Florida for final integration, we are one step closer to testing the critical capabilities needed to land Americans on the Moon, and ultimately, paving the way for our first crewed missions to Mars.”
NASA engineers maneuvered the top four-fifths of the SLS core stage—which contains “the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank, and forward skirt”—from inside the Michoud Assembly Facility to the agency’s Pegasus barge for delivery to the Kennedy Space Center.
After it arrives at the center, the stage outfitting and vertical integration will be completed, and NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program will stack the rocket’s components in preparation for launch.
Measuring 212 feet tall, the completed core stage will be made of the top four-fifths of the rocket combined with its engine section.
NASA notes: “During launch and flight, the fully integrated stage will operate for more than eight minutes, producing more than 2 million pounds of thrust to propel astronauts inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft into orbit.”
The Artemis III mission next year will launch astronauts to Earth’s orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft on top of SLS to test the “rendezvous and docking capabilities” required to allow the Artemis IV astronauts to land on the moon in 2028.
“NASA’s SLS is the only rocket capable of sending Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch,” the space agency says.
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