Final puzzle piece for Artemis I rocket set for trip to Kennedy Space Center
Assembly Building with the rest of the SLS components including the external boosters and Orion capsule already on site. The barge trip will take six days through the Gulf of Mexico.
In early 2020, Boeing and NASA’s announced the core stage could have made it to KSC as early as July that year, but delays from hurricanes, COVID-19 and an incomplete hot fire test earlier in 2021 kept pushing the final sign off.
The core stage will be combined with two side boosters from NASA partner Northrop Grumman that together will produce about 8.8 million pounds of thrust, making it the most powerful rocket to launch from Earth.
Artemis I will be an uncrewed mission to the moon, but actually traveling farther from Earth than any ship ever built for humans has ever flown before, about 280,000 miles away.
NASA’s SLS schedule still has Artemis I launching as early as November with Artemis II, a crewed mission around the moon without landing, by 2023 and then a 2024 flight that aims to put the first woman on the moon. Those targets, though, were part of the Trump administration’s push and could change
NASA/ COURTESY under the new Biden administration.
Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk would not put a solid date on any updated Artemis I plans, but said last week it needs to be done “as quickly and safely as possible.”
President Joe Biden’s nominee to become the new NASA administrator, former Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who himself once flew on the space shuttle, said during a Wednesday meeting of the Senate commerce, science and transportation committee that he expects Artemis I could still fly before the end of the year.
“At the end of the year, perhaps early next year, you’re going to see the largest rocket ever - most powerful launched - that is going to be the workhorse of the program of going back to the moon and then on to Mars, which was a multi-administration project,” Nelson said. “These projects are not one administration. They’re many. It’s like building an aircraft carrier. You start it and it will take you years down the road, and it has to be continued regardless of who’s in the majority, regardless of who’s in the presidency. And so too we are seeing this and we will see the fulfillment of these programs.”