NASA finishes assembling Artemis mission rocket to take humans to moon

NASA has assembled the “most powerful rocket ever built” the Space Launch System (SLS) that will enable astronauts to begin their journey to the moon under the agency’s Artemis program. On June 13, the space administration’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) and Jacobs teams at the spaceport’s High Bay 3 finally stacked the various elements of the SLS rocket on top of the mobile launcher inside the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Weighing more than 188,000 lbs without fuel, and an estimated 212 feet tall, the super-heavy-lift launch vehicle SLS’s giant core stage consists of 4 propellant engines and is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and cargo to the Moon on a single mission. 

On June 14, the SLS was placed on its path to the pad for Artemis I, the first integrated mission that would land the first woman and the first person of colour on the Moon. NASA’s SLS and Orion spacecraft, along with the commercial human landing system and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, are the backbone for the deep space exploration for the astronauts. The stacking and assembly activities for NASA’s Artemis I mission have been underway since Friday. spaceport’s Exploration Ground Systems crew has been working at the LaunchPad 39B, where NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will lift off. 

[Credit: NASA]

[Credit: NASA]

The SLS Program delivered the core stage rocket to the center’s Launch Complex 39 turn basin wharf after completing a successful series of Green Run tests at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The 212-foot-tall core stage completed its 900-mile journey aboard the agency’s Pegasus barge on April 27. John Honeycutt, the SLS program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, had informed that with the delivery of the SLS core stage for Artemis I, NASA has all the parts of the rocket at Kennedy for the first Artemis mission.  NASA would work with the Exploration Ground Systems team to put the huge pieces for SLS together to build America’s Moon rocket, he had added.

[Space Launch System (SLS) core stage arrives at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA]

'Innovative technologies' to explore moon

On Monday, the team completed the integration of SLS on the twin solid rocket boosters that were fully stacked atop the mobile launcher and the launch vehicle stage adapter which was housed inside High Bay 4. During the Artemis program, NASA will use innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. “We will collaborate with our commercial and international partners and establish sustainable exploration for the first time. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars,” NASA said in a release.