NASA's giant Artemis II moon rocket core rolls out en route to Vehicle Assembly Building
Emerging engines-first, the biggest rocket core stage ever built by NASA started slowly creeping out of its cylinder-shaped cargo barge Wednesday morning as workers — dwarfed in scale — scurried near the berth wearing yellow reflective vests.
The orange Artemis II core stage rolled out from NASA's 310-foot-long Pegasus barge at Kennedy Space Center's Turning Basin dock, then slowly inched into the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building during the next three hours. Close to 50 photographers and reporters documented the action from the adjacent NASA Press Site, lenses focused on the supersized segment.
"That first stage is huge, being 26 feet wide in diameter, 212 feet long," Paul Hudson, Jacobs senior vehicle engineer, said during the rollout.
"That's bigger than a lot of rockets," Hudson said.
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Artemis II is tentatively scheduled for launch no earlier than September 2025 from pad 39B at KSC. Crew members are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.
In a key pre-launch milestone, Pegasus transported the mighty rocket core roughly 900 miles this past week along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean from NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. After departing July 16, the cylinder-shaped barge floated into Port Canaveral on Monday night.
The hulking rocket core is the heart of the agency's multi-component Space Launch System. The core:
Will help produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, counting its four RS-25 engines and pair of 17-story-tall solid-fueled booster rockets.
Is designed to send NASA astronauts into space at more than 17,000 mph, propelling them around the moon for the first time in 50 years.
Can carry more than 59,525 pounds into deep space.
During the coming months, technicians will integrate the core stage with the Artemis II upper stage, solid rocket boosters and NASA's Orion spacecraft inside the VAB. Fully stacked, the SLS stands about 320 feet high — taller than a football field.
“Big turnaround. A lot of learning from Artemis I. It was an outstanding test flight. Great data. We’ve made some adjustments, and we’ve also gone and upgraded because we’ve gone from an uncrewed test flight to the first crewed flight," said Chris Cianciola, NASA’s SLS deputy program manager.
“We found out we had to harden the launch pad in certain areas, relative to the blast from the launch vehicle,” he said.
Cianciola said the vehicle is basically the same vehicle as Artemis I, but with a few tweaks.
“It starts the process. We have three programs coming together all at once. EGS (Exploration Ground Systems) at Kennedy Space Center is managing that dance,” he said.
Boeing is the lead contractor that built the huge core stage. Jay Grow, the company's associate chief engineer for SLS launch operations, noted that the core's internal propellant tanks hold more than 733,000 gallons of chilled rocket fuel — "this thing is massive."
"A swimming pool is only 15,000. And that's a decent-sized swimming pool. Kind of puts that into scale," Grow said, gesturing at the orange core after it had fully emerged from Pegasus.
"That liquid hydrogen tank's 150 feet long," he said.
L3Harris Technologies company Aerojet Rocketdyne is the RS-25 engine lead contractor. Bill Muddle, lead field integration engineer, watched the core stage emerge from Pegasus from the KSC Press Site.
"Between manufacturing and engineering and all the other things that go around, I would say there's probably close to 2,000 people that were involved in the whole process," Muddle said of the engines' cross-country assembly and testing process.
Three of the rocket core's RS-25 engines date to NASA's space shuttle era. A history, courtesy of Aerojet Rocketdyne:
Engine 2059 flew five shuttle missions, including Endeavour's final flight (STS-134) in May 2011.
Engine 2047 flew 15 shuttle missions, including Atlantis' final flight (STS-135) in July 2011.
Engine 2062 was assembled near the end of the shuttle program, but never flew.
Engine 2063 was assembled at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
"I was only 9 years old when we first stepped on the moon. And I get to see us back on the moon again. So that's just awesome," Muddle said.
He said he considers the Artemis II engines "my kids," in a sense.
"I've been there when they were a small, little child. And now, I'm seeing them off to college. I've gone through all their troubles, their concerns, their issues, helped them along to get them ready to fly again to put humans into space," Muddle said.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at [email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA's huge Artemis II moon rocket segment rolls out at Cape Canaveral
