Crews from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, offload a transportation stand from NASA’s Pegasus barge Saturday, Jan. 7.
Crews from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, offload a transportation stand from NASA’s Pegasus barge Saturday, Jan. 7. The barge ferried the stand from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it was used to transport the launch vehicle stage adapter (LVSA) of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for Artemis I.
The nearly 28-foot-tall LVSA is a cone-shaped element that connects the rocket’s core stage and the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) and partially covers the in-space stage’s single RL10 engine. It is fully produced and manufactured at Marshall by Teledyne Brown Engineering, the LVSA lead contractor. The transportation stand is one of two at Marshall and will be used as teams continue to manufacture the LVSA for Artemis III. NASA and Teledyne Brown Engineering use the stands to maneuver the LVSA hardware from facility to facility, across the facility, and for application of the thermal protection system.
After unloading the transportation stand from Pegasus, teams at Marshall will load the Artemis III LVSA hardware onto the stand to transport it to the facility where the thermal protection system spray foam will be applied by hand. NASA and Teledyne Brown have already completed applying the thermal protection system spray foam to the LVSA for Artemis II.