Saturday night, Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core phase of NASA’s second space launch system rocket to between the vehicle’s two solid fuel boosters.
Working within the iconic 52-story high vehicle assembly, the ground team first lifted the Cream Orange Core Stage from its cradle in the VAB’s cavern transfer aisle, a central passage between the building’s four rocket assembly brackets. The crane then rotates vertically so that workers can disconnect one of the cranes from the bottom of the rocket.
That hangs the rocket on a 325-ton top crane, which lifts it up to the beams of the high bay northeast of the building. The core phase of the Boeing construction weighs about 94 tons (85 metric tons) and is about 212 feet (65 meters) high, and will contain 730,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant when lifting. It is the biggest element of NASA’s Artemis II mission, and is scheduled to take crews at the far end of the moon right next year.
Ultimately, the ground crew lowered the rockets between the space launch system’s dual solid rocket boosters that had been stacked on a mobile launch platform within High Bay 3, where NASA assembled the space shuttle and Asaturn V rockets for Apollo lunar missions.
On Sunday, the team inside VAB connected the core stage to each booster at the forward and stern bearing points. After completing the electrical and data connection, the engineers will stack a cone adapter on the top of the core stage, then the rocket’s on-stage, another adapter ring, and finally the Orion spacecraft, which will become the site of the four-person Artemis II crew so that they can travel through deep space on a 10-day journey.
Title: NASA’s four remaining RS-25 engines will power the SLS Core Stage.
Image source: NASA/Frank Michaux
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This will be the first crew flight of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the Lunar South Pole and ultimately establish a sustainable human presence on the moon, with a focus on future expeditions to Mars. The first captain landings of the program were conducted for the Artemis III mission, again using SLS and Orion, but add a new piece: SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket will be used as a lunar lander on the human-level level. The Artemis II will not land, but it will bring people near the moon for the first time since 1972.
Last year, the core phase of Artemis II came from a Louisiana factory, and NASA began stacking SLS Solid Rocket boosters in November. Other latest achievements on the road to Artemis II include solar panels with the Orion spacecraft installed, as well as the closure of the process service module at the Kennedy Space Center and equipped with aerodynamic panels that will be placed during launch.
Next month, the Orion spacecraft will head to another Kennedy factory to refuel, then head to another building to meet its launch abortion system, and then move to VAB to stack it on the space launch system. It took about eight months to complete these activities before the delivery of Orion to VAB before the 2022 unforeseen Artemis I mission, so it is fair to doubt that NASA is targeted launch date for Artemis II in April 2026, which has lagged behind plans.
