The massive, 212-foot-tall Space Launch System (SLS) core stage for Artemis-2 has arrived at Kennedy Space Center, following a 900-mile journey on a barge from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where it was manufactured and assembled.
This is a major milestone in the development process for Artemis-2, which will return the first humans to the Moon in more than half a century. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will launch aboard the core stage of the historic Apollo 8-like mission in September 2025.
Both Wiseman and Hansen were in Michoud to watch their rocket lift off.
With blistering heat and dense humidity in the air at KSC today, NASA Exploration Ground Systems teams transferred the empty 188,000-pound platform from the barge to a self-propelled transporter and slowly rolled the lunar rocket into NASA’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The short transfer took about 3 hours.
Now that the massive stage is safely inside the VAB, engineers will soon begin processing it for stacking operations in the coming months. NASA intends to conduct a status review of Artemis-2 in September to determine if operations can continue with stacking the core, twin SRBs, and spacecraft for Artemis II. The SLS Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter (LVSA) and Orion Stage Adapter (OSA) will be shipped to KSC soon.
When that happens, the giant core stage will lift off the ground, rise to a “standing” position, and be gently lowered into a high bay between its two solid rocket boosters atop a mobile launch platform (MLP).
The orange scenario has been ready for quite some time now. Previously reported by AmericaSpace's Alex Longo, NASA put the core stage hardware and software through a series of integrated functional tests last January. It passed with flying colors and was then put into storage while NASA announced a 10-month delay in the Artemis 2 mission Due to problems with the Orion spacecraft's heat shield, life support system, and batteries, NASA decided it was preferable to store it at Michoud, rather than inside the KSC VAB.
Orion is the critical path in the Artemis-2 launch processing schedule at this time. The spacecraft recently underwent vacuum testing at KSC. An independent review is still underway on the performance of the reentry heat shield on Artemis-1 and corrective actions that may follow for Artemis-2 and beyond.
The 10 segments of the twin SRBs have been at KSC since September 2023 and will soon be integrated into the top of the MLP, forming the giant, 17-story-tall, cigarette-shaped white boosters that will flank each side of the SLS rocket. Together, the twin boosters will produce more than 75% of the total thrust at liftoff, sending Artemis-2 and its four astronauts to the Moon.
Two of the four RS-25 engines on the Artemis-2 core stage are Space Shuttle veterans. One was used on 15 flights and was borrowed from Endeavour. Another flew on five missions and was borrowed from Atlantis. The remaining two engines were built from scratch. to support the Artemis program.
Together, the SLS rocket's twin boosters and four RS-25 core stage engines will produce nearly 9 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
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