Artemis I Booster Segment Mate Pinning

Brendan Deuble, a handling, mechanical and structures engineer on the Jacobs Technology Inc. Test and Operations Support Contract, inspects the Space Launch System’s (SLS) right-hand aft skirt inside the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 24, 2020. While in the RPSF, the aft skirt will be mated with the rocket’s right-hand motor segment – one of five segments that make up one of two solid rocket boosters. Once the two aft skirts are mated with the aft segments, they will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking on the mobile launcher. Manufactured by Northrop Grumman in Utah, the twin boosters provide more than 75 percent of the total SLS thrust at launch. Under the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will test the Orion spacecraft and SLS as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon.

Brendan Deuble, a handling, mechanical and structures engineer on the Jacobs Technology Inc. Test and Operations Support Contract, inspects the Space Launch System’s (SLS) right-hand aft skirt inside the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 24, 2020. While in the RPSF, the aft skirt will be mated with the rocket’s right-hand motor segment – one of five segments that make up one of two solid rocket boosters. Once the two aft skirts are mated with the aft segments, they will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking on the mobile launcher. Manufactured by Northrop Grumman in Utah, the twin boosters provide more than 75 percent of the total SLS thrust at launch. Under the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will test the Orion spacecraft and SLS as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon.

Photographer NASA/Kim Shiflett
Location RPSF