Technicians lifted the intertank for NASA’s deep space rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), into a vertical stacking area at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Here, engineers will join it with two other large structures to form the top half of the 212-foot-tall core stage that will be flown on Exploration Mission-1, the first flight of SLS and the Orion spacecraft. The intertank, which holds some of the avionics that help control the rocket, will be bolted to the propellant tank that will hold 196,000 pounds of liquid oxygen. Later the forward skirt, which houses the flight computers and more avionics, will be put on the very top of the stack. This operation called “the forward join” will complete the assembly of the top of the core stage.
Image Credit: NASA/Jude Guidry