NASA Deputy Administrator James Morhard speaks with media in front of flight hardware for Artemis 1 during his first visit to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans Friday, June 28, 2019. Michoud is manufacturing the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. SLS will send astronauts aboard the agency’s Orion spacecraft to the Gateway in lunar orbit for missions to the surface of the Moon, and ultimately Mars. Morhard, joined by Robert Champion, director of Michoud, and Paul McConnaughey, deputy director of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, toured the Louisiana facility to see the latest progress in assembling and manufacturing some of the largest and most complex parts of SLS and Orion for the first two Artemis missions to the Moon. Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed test flight, followed by Artemis 2 with crew. NASA and Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, recently completed assembling four of the five parts of the rocket’s core stage. The SLS engine section and four RS-25 engines will be integrated to the stage later this summer.
NASA is working to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024. SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with Orion and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon. SLS will be the most powerful rocket in the world and will send astronauts in the Orion spacecraft farther into space than ever before. No other rocket is capable of carrying astronauts in Orion around the Moon.
Image Credit: NASA