NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft prepares to depart the U.S. Army’s Redstone Airfield in Huntsville, Alabama, April 3, with flight hardware for NASA’s Space Launch System – the agency’s new, deep-space rocket that will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system. The Orion stage adapter, the top of the rocket that connects SLS to Orion is loaded into the Guppy, which will deliver it to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for flight preparations. On Exploration Mission-1, the first integrated flight of SLS and the Orion spacecraft, the adapter will carry 13 CubeSats as secondary payloads. SLS will send Orion beyond the Moon, about 280,000 miles from Earth. This is farther from Earth than any spacecraft built for humans has ever traveled.
Image Credit: NASA/Marshall/Fred Deaton