Crews at NASA’s Stennis Space Center worked earlier this week to remove the first flight core stage of the agency’s Space Launch System rocket from the B-2 Test Stand in preparation for its transport to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Operations required crews to lift the core stage from its vertical placement in the stand and lower it to a horizontal position on the B-2 Test Stand tarmac. The stage now will be loaded on NASA’s Pegasus barge for transport to Kennedy, where it will be prepared for launch of the Artemis I mission. Removal of the largest rocket stage ever built by NASA followed completion of a series of eight Green Run tests over the past year, the most powerful performed at Stennis in more than 40 years.
As part of the backbone of NASA’s Artemis program, SLS will return humans, including the first woman and person of color, to the surface of the Moon to establish a sustainable presence and prepare for eventual missions to Mars.
