NASA, Boeing Move Artemis IV Rocket Hardware to Barge

Technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans move the engine section of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for its Artemis IV mission to the Vertical Assembly Building on Aug. 20 in preparation for shipment to NASA’ Kennedy Space Center in FL. While teams at Michoud completed the structural build on the flight hardware and began outfitting some of the internal components, its final intergration, including the installation of vital sytems and the four RS-25 engines, will be performed at Kennedy. The engine section is one of five major components that make up the 212-foot-tall core stage. The forward skirt, liquid oxygen tank, intertank, and liquid hydrogen tank for Artemis IV are all in various stages of production at Michoud, where they will be stacked and outfitted. Together with its four RS-25 engines and its twin solid rocket boosters, it will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust to send the Orion spacecraft, astronauts, and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit to the Moon. With increaslingly complex missions aimed at expanding deep space exploration, NASA’s Artemis program will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner on the Moon and, ultimately, Mars.

These photos and videos show teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans preparing, moving, and loading the engine section of a future SLS (Space Launch System) rocket to NASA’s Pegasus barge Aug. 28. The hardware will form the bottom-most section of the SLS core stage that will power NASA’s Artemis IV mission, which will be the first mission to the Gateway space station in lunar orbit under the Artemis campaign. The barge will transport the spaceflight hardware to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida via the agency’s Pegasus barge. Once in Florida, the engine section will undergo final outfitting inside Kennedy’s Space Station Processing Facility.

Photographer Steven B. Seipel
Album Space_Launch_System
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