NASA prepares to roll Artemis 2 core stage to the Vehicle Assembly Building

NASA’s Pegasus barge, carrying the agency’s massive SLS (Space Launch System) core stage, arrives at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Complex 39 turn basin wharf in Florida on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, after journeying from the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The core stage is the next piece of Artemis hardware to arrive at the spaceport and will be offloaded and moved to NASA Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be prepared for integration ahead of the Artemis II launch. Image: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA’s took another important step in its Artemis program, designed to return humans to the Moon in preparation for missions to Mars. On Tuesday, the 212-foot-long Space launch System (SLS) core stage, nestled inside NASA’s massive Pegasus barge, completed its week-long voyage from eastern Louisiana to Florida.

It is part of the second SLS rocket that will support the Artemis 2 mission to the Moon, marking the first crewed flight of the vehicle. On Wednesday, teams from Jacobs, the prime contractor for NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) Program at the Kennedy Space Center, will unpack the core stage and slowly roll it into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the process beginning at 9 a.m. EDT (1300 UTC).

The Artemis 2 mission will feature four crew members: three NASA astronauts and a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. They will fly a roughly eight-day mission around the Moon and back with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California.

The core stage is powered by four RS-25 engines manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris company, and provides about 512,000 pounds of thrust or about 25 percent of the total thrust needed at liftoff.

Its propellant tanks store a combined 733,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen when fully fueled. Boeing is the prime contractor for the core stage, which is assembled at the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana.

The arrival of the Boeing-built core stage is just one of the items in flow for the mission, which is targeting launch no earlier than September 2025. Out at Launch Complex 39B, where the SLS rocket will liftoff, EGS teams are completing testing work on the Mobile Launcher, the launch tower that allows for crew ingress, engine sound suppression and support for the rocket’s various systems in the lead up to launch.

Matthew Ramsey, the Artemis 2 mission manager, said they have about a month of work left on the ML before it returns to the VAB. At that point they will begin assembling the SLS rocket, which will begin with the pair of solid rocket boosters that attach to either side of the core stage.

“We’ll stack the aft skirts on with the aft assemblies and then we’ll go right, left, right left, all the way up, five segments on each side. And then, put the core in and start doing integrated testing of that,” Ramsey said. “And then eventually, we’ll get the upper stage in, do testing there and then the Orion spacecraft. Lot of testing between now and September of next year.”

Segments of the Northrop Grumman-built solid rocket boosters that will support the Artemis 2 mission are stored in a facility near the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Image: Will Robinson-Smith/Spaceflight Now

Elsewhere at KSC, at a facility called the Rotating, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF), Jacobs is working with Northrop Grumman to process the solid rocket boosters. They’re manufactured and tested in Utah before being brought by train out to KSC.

Doug Hurley, former NASA astronaut and current Senior Vice President of Business Development Northrop Grumman in its Propulsion Systems department, said they’re making great progress towards future Artemis missions for years to come.

“Everything’s done through Artemis 4 right now. Now, it’s just the case of waiting when NASA needs the booster components for [Artemis] 3, we’ll ship those and for [Artemis] 4, we’ll ship those. And I think folks have already started work on Artemis 5 and casting the propellant for that,” Hurley said. “We’re certainly extremely excited and proud to be part of the program and doing our part to contribute.”