Artemis I Booster Segment Mate Pinning

Inside the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first of many pins that will secure the right-hand motor segment – one of five segments that make up one of two solid rocket boosters for the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) – to the rocket’s right-hand aft skirt is inserted on June 24, 2020. Once the aft segments are mated to the two aft skirts, 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.

Inside the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first of many pins that will secure the right-hand motor segment – one of five segments that make up one of two solid rocket boosters for the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) – to the rocket’s right-hand aft skirt is inserted on June 24, 2020. Once the aft segments are mated to the two aft skirts, 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