Technicians with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems rehearse booster stacking operations inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Sept.14, in preparation for the Artemis I launch. The team is using full-scale replicas of booster segments, referred to as pathfinders, for the practice exercise in one of the tallest sections, or high bays, of the VAB built for stacking rockets. As part of the rehearsal, a pathfinder for an aft segment, the very bottom of the stack, was prepared in High Bay 4. Then, a team of crane operators moved the segment into High Bay 3, where it was placed on the mobile launcher. Careful measurements were taken before the team added a center segment to the stack.
The actual Space Launch System (SLS) booster segments will be stacked on the mobile launcher later this year, following completion of Green Run testing of the rocket’s core stage – a series of eight tests taking place at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Under the Artemis program, NASA is working toward landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon in 2024. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will test SLS and the Orion spacecraft as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett