Artemis I Boosters Stacked on Mobile Launcher
The stacking of the Artemis I boosters has been completed. Over several weeks, workers used one of five massive cranes to place 10 booster segments and nose assemblies on the mobile launcher inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Engineers with Exploration Ground Systems placed the first segment on Nov. 21, 2020, and continued the process until the final nose assembly was placed on March 2.
“Seeing the Space Launch System solid rocket boosters stacked completely on the Mobile Launcher for the first time makes me proud of the entire team especially the Exploration Ground Systems crew at Kennedy who are assembling them and also the teams at Marshall and Northrop Grumman who designed, tested and built them.”
Bruce Tiller, the SLS boosters manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Prior to the arrival of the core stage, the team will finish installing electrical instrumentation and pyrotechnics, then test the systems on the Artemis I boosters. When the SLS core stage arrives at Kennedy, technicians will transport it to the VAB and then stack it on the mobile launcher between the two boosters.
The SLS will be the most powerful rocket in the world, producing up to 8.8 million pounds of thrust during its Artemis I launch.
“Seeing the Space Launch System solid rocket boosters stacked completely on the Mobile Launcher for the first time makes me proud of the entire team especially the Exploration Ground Systems crew at Kennedy who are assembling them and also the teams at Marshall and Northrop Grumman who designed, tested and built them,” said Bruce Tiller, the SLS boosters manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “This team has created the tallest, most powerful boosters ever built for flight, boosters that will help launch the Artemis I mission to the Moon.”
Work is also progressing on the core stage. Engineers this month successfully repaired a liquid oxygen valve on the Space Launch System rocket’s core stage with subsequent checks confirming the valve to be operating properly. The team is moving forward with final preparations for a hot fire test in mid-March at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
Artemis I will be an uncrewed test of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon. Under the Artemis program, NASA aims to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon and establish sustainable lunar exploration.
(Image provided with NASA news release)