Assembly of NASA’s Mega-Rocket Complete for Trip Beyond Moon

By Bob Granath

The most powerful rocket ever built now is fully assembled at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and final preparations are underway to begin the agency’s most ambitious program of exploration. A series of integrated tests are planned prior to the targeted liftoff in March 2022. The Space Launch System (SLS) will send an Orion spacecraft on a mission well beyond the Moon paving the way for landing the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface.

The SLS rocket is designed for missions carrying crew or cargo to the Moon and beyond. At liftoff, the launch vehicle will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust with the core stage’s four engines and a pair of solid rocket boosters (SRBs). By comparison, the Apollo Saturn V Moon rocket and the Space Shuttle each generated about 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

“Our team has demonstrated tremendous dedication preparing for the launch of Artemis I,” said Mike Bolger, NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) program manager at the Florida spaceport. “While there is still work to be done to get to launch, with continued integrated tests and Wet Dress Rehearsal, seeing the fully stacked SLS is certainly a reward for all of us. It’s hard to put into words what this milestone means, not only to us here at Exploration Ground Systems, but to all the incredibly talented people who have worked so hard to help us get to this point.”

Plans call for the uncrewed Artemis I mission to be an integrated flight test of the systems needed to support a long-term presence on the Moon serving as a steppingstone on the way to human exploration of Mars.

“This is a mission that truly will do what hasn’t been done and learn what isn’t known,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It will blaze a trail that people will follow on the next Orion flight, pushing the edges of the envelope to prepare for that mission.”

The SLS elements started coming together during November 2020 inside high bay 3 of the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy. Technicians and engineers with EGS and Jacobs, the agency’s Test and Operations Support Contractor, began stacking the twin five-segment solid rocket boosters on the mobile launcher. Built by Northrop Grumman in Utah, the boosters provide more than 75 percent of the total SLS thrust at liftoff.

After completing fueling and engine firing tests NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the massive 188,000-pound SLS core stage arrived at Kennedy on April 29, 2021. EGS and Jacobs teams transported it into the VAB where it was inspected and mounted between the twin solid rocket boosters on June 12, 2021.

The Boeing Company in Huntsville, Alabama, builds the core stage along with the avionics that control the vehicle during flight. The 212-foot tall stage feeds 733,000 gallons of cryogenic, or super-cold, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to its four Aerojet Rocketdyne engines generating 1.6 million pounds of thrust.

On July 5, 2021, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) was mounted atop the SLS core stage. The ICPS is a modified Delta IV Heavy Cryogenic Second Stage for NASA’s Artemis program and is built by Boeing and United Launch Alliance. Once the Orion is in Earth orbit, the propulsion stage will fire its liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fueled engine to boost the spacecraft with the thrust needed to send it tens of thousands of miles from Earth, well beyond the Moon.

The fully assembled Orion spacecraft for Artemis I with its launch abort system was lifted and attached atop the SLS on Oct. 20, 2021, thus completing assembly for the flight test. Orion is built by Lockheed Martin in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy.

NASA and contractor teams now are conducting verification tests ahead of rolling out to the refurbished Launch Complex 39B. This will lead to a “dress rehearsal” – a countdown simulation – with the SLS fully fueled and controllers at their consoles in Kennedy’s Launch Control Center.

Artemis I Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is looking forward to this key milestone in preparation for the historic mission.

“Our launch team is continuing to move toward launch together,” she said. “I am confident that on launch day, we will be ready for all that day holds.”

During its three-week trip, Orion will travel 280,000 miles past the Moon. The flight will be longer than any for a human-rated spacecraft without docking to a space station. The Orion capsule also will return home faster and hotter than ever before.

The Artemis 1 mission take several days, allowing engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to evaluate the spacecraft’s systems and, as needed, adjust its trajectory. After Orion flies about 62 miles above the lunar surface, it will use the Moon’s gravitation to propel the spacecraft into a new deep retrograde, or opposite direction. It will orbit about 40,000 miles from the Moon for about six days, collecting data and allowing mission controllers to assess its performance.

Using another precisely timed engine firing of Orion’s service module engine in conjunction with the Moon’s gravity, will accelerate it back to Earth. The spacecraft will enter the atmosphere, traveling at 25,000 mph, with its heat shield protecting the spacecraft from re-entry temperatures of approximately 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Slated for 2024, Artemis 2 will send astronauts on a different trajectory and test Orion’s systems with a crew.

Plans call for future Orion missions to assemble and dock with a Gateway. a lunar orbiting space station. NASA and its partners plan to use the outpost for deep-space operations including missions to and on the Moon gaining experience to extend human exploration farther than ever before.

In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the NASA’s Apollo Program sent the first astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit landing six crews on the Moon.

Artemis is a collaborative effort with commercial and international partners using innovative new technologies and systems to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. From there, the agency will use what was learned on and around the Moon to send astronauts to Mars.

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