Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans transport a 51-foot-tall liquid oxygen tank out of the vertical assembly building on July 23, 2026. The liquid oxygen tank, which will form part of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for NASA’s Artemis IV mission to the Moon, is suspended in a strap carrier transport apparatus and brought into the main factory building. Here, teams with SLS core stage prime contractor, Boeing, will perform post-proof non-destructive evaluations on the flight hardware before moving forward with tank cleaning. The propellant tank will hold more than 196,000 gallons of super-cooled liquid oxygen at launch and is one of five major elements that make up the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket stage. The core stage, along with its four RS-25 engines at its base, produces more than two million pounds of thrust to help launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft, astronauts, and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit and to the lunar surface for Artemis. Image credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker