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SLS Rocket First Core Stage For Artemis II

July 21, 2024

July 16, 2024 - Team members at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans move the first core stage to the Pegasus barge and load it where it will be ferried 900-miles to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launching the first crewed flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the agency’s Artemis II mission. The move marked the first time a fully assembled Moon rocket stage for a crewed mission has rolled out from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans since the Apollo Program.

The core stage for the SLS mega rocket is the largest stage NASA has ever produced. At 212 feet tall, the stage consists of five major elements, including two huge propellant tanks that collectively hold more than 733,000 gallons of super chilled liquid propellant to feed four RS-25 engines at its base.

During launch and flight, the stage will operate for just over eight minutes, producing more than 2 million pounds of thrust to help send a crew of four astronauts inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft onward to the Moon. NASA is working to land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the Moon under Artemis.

SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with the Orion spacecraft and Gateway in orbit around the Moon and commercial human landing systems, next-generation space, next-generational spacesuits, and rovers on the lunar surface. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch.

Image created by USA Patriotism! from NASA photos by Sam Lott.

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