Tardy Saturday night, Technicians from Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the basic scene of the second NASA rocket system to start in the position between two boosters driven a eternal vehicle.
Working in the iconic 52-story vehicle assembly building, ground teams used hefty cranes to first raise the basic ToftterScotch-Orange scene from the cradle in the immense VAB crossing, a central passage between four bays of the building. The cranes then turned the structure vertically, enabling employees to disconnect one of the cranes from the bottom of the rocket.
This meant that the rocket hanging on a 325-ton crane, which would lift it to the Pawęża to the north-eastern bay of the building. The basic stage built by the Boeing weighs about 94 tons (85 metric tons), has about 212 feet (65 meters) and will contain 730,000 gallons of cryogenic fuel during protrusion. This is the largest element of the NASA Artemis II mission, which is to pour the crew of astronauts on the other side of the moon next year.
Finally, the ground crews left the rocket between double solid rocket amplifiers System Space Starning System already arranged on a mobile start platform inside High Bay 3, where NASA collected space rays and Saturn V rockets for Apollo Lunar mission.
On Sunday, the bands inside VAB joined the basic scene with each amplifier at the points of the attachment forward and stern. After completing electrical connections and data, engineers arrange a cone-shaped adapter on the core stage, followed by the upper stage of the rocket, the next adapter ring and finally the Orion spaceship, which will be home for the Artemis II crew of four people during a 10-day journey through a deep space.
Signature: Four RS-25 engines remain from the NASA space ferry program will supply the SLS basic scene.
Loan: NASA/FRANK Michaux
Through movements
This will be the first crew of the NASA Artemis program, whose goal is to land astronauts at the Southern Moon pole and finally build a sustainable presence of man on the moon, with a view to future trips to Mars. The first crews of Lunar Landing in the program is arranged in the ARTEMIS III mission, again using SLS and Orion, but adding a novel song: The huge Starship Spacex rocket will be used as a lunar landing. Artemis II will not land, but for the first time since 1972 it will move people to the moon area.
The main stage of Artemis II came from the Louisiana factory last year, and NASA began to arranged SLS Sols Solid Rocket Boosters in November. Other recent achievements on the road to Artemis II include the installation of Orion Solar solar panels and closing the service module in the Kennedy Space Center with an aerodynamic panel, which will be Jettison during the premiere.
Next month, the Orion spaceship will go to another facility in Kennedy for refueling, and then to another building to meet the abortion system before it goes to VAB to lay space at the top. Before the mission unrestricted Artemis and in 2022, it took about eight months before delivering Orion to VAB, so it is candid to be skeptical about the target release date of NASA for Artemis II in April 2026, which is already going on years of delay.