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Rollin’ on the River: NASA’s Barge Pegasus

NASA’s barge, Pegasus
NASA’s barge, Pegasus, will ferry the massive core stage of the agency’s new rocket, the Space Launch System, on journeys from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to other NASA centers for testing and for launches. SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for deep-space missions.

NASA’s barge, Pegasus, will ferry the massive core stage of the agency’s new rocket, the Space Launch System, on journeys from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to other NASA centers for testing and for launches. SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for deep-space missions.
The barge will first transport test articles for the rocket’s core stage to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The test articles will undergo extensive structural testing — being pushed, pulled and twisted to see how it can withstand the extreme forces the rocket will experience during launch, liftoff and flight. These tests, along with analytical models and other data, will show the design of the engine section is structurally sound. Pegasus will later ferry the flight-ready core stage to NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, for testing and then to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration of the SLS flight vehicle in the Vehicle Assembly Building.