It seems likely that NASA will fly the Artemis II mission

Late Saturday night, Technicians moved at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the basic stage of Nassa The second space launch system is moving between the car’s hard reinforcement.

By working inside the 52 -storey vehicle assembly building consisting, the ground teams used the hard cranes to raise the basic stage of the cash in the cradle in the Capital transport corridor of the VAB, which is the central corridor between the four bays of the collection of missiles for the building. Then the cranes rotated the structure vertically, allowing workers to separate one of the cranes from the bottom of the missile.

He left that missile commenting on a top lever of 325 tons, raising it over the crossing to the northeast Gulf of the building. The basic phase built by Boeing weighs about 94 tons (85 metric tons), with a length of about 212 feet (65 meters), and will include 730,000 gallons of the cooler motivation in takeoff. It is the largest element in NASA Artemis II missionIt is scheduled to move a crew of astronauts around the maximum side of moon Just next year.

Finally, the ground crews reduced the missile between the dual solid missile reinforcements of the space launch system already stacked on a mobile launch platform inside the High Bay 3, where NASA assembled space shutters and Saturn V missiles for APOLLO.

On Sunday, the teams inside the Vab connected the basic stage with all reinforced points at front and loads. After completing the electrical connections and data, the engineers will accumulate an adapter in the form of a cone on top of the basic stage, followed by the upper stage in the missile, another adapter ring, and finally the Orion spacecraft that will be home to the ARTEMIS II crew of four people for its 10 -day trip across the deep space.

The main stage of the space launch system is seen between the double reinforcements fed by the missile inside the vehicle collection building at the Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida.

Photo: NASA/ Frank Michoch

Clear designation: Four RS-25 engines that left NASA’s space shuttle program will operate SLS basic stage.
Credit: NASA/Frank Misho

Through suggestions

This will be the first natural trip from the NASA Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the southern pole, and eventually build a sustainable human existence on the moon, with the eye towards future campaigns to Mars. The first landing of the moon in the program, it was overcome on the ARTEMIS III mission, again using SLS and Orion, but adding a new piece: Spacex A huge models missile will be used as a lunar fun made of human. Artemis II will not land, but it will carry people to the vicinity of the moon for the first time since 1972.

The main stage of Artemis II from its factory in Louisiana last year, and NASA began to accumulate SLS SLS in November. Other modern achievements on the path towards Artemis II include the installation of solar panels in Orion Spacecraft, closing the CRAFT service unit at the Kennedy Space Center with a dynamic airboxes that will be abandoned during the launch.

Once the Orion spacecraft traveled next month to a different facility in Kennedy to provide it, then to another building to meet the launch frustration system before moving to Vab to accumulate the space launch system. Before the non -transmitted ARTEMIS I mission in 2022, it took about eight months to complete these activities before Orion came to Vab, so it is fair to be skeptical about the date of the target NASA launch of Artemis II in April 2026, which already works behind years.