The central stage of NASA's SLS rocket has arrived at Kennedy Space Center. However, NASA is facing challenges to launch the rocket before the end of this year.
The rocket booster that will aid in the return of Americans to the Moon is being eventually pushed into the Vehicle Assembly Building for piling.
"Once inside, the massive rocket stage will be integrated with @NASA_Orion and additional flight hardware ahead of the #Artemis I launch," NASA tweeted.
It landed on a Pegasus barge from a Mississippi space center on Tuesday. For the Artemis flights, the rocket is being prepared. The core stage was relocated from Mississippi's Stennis Space Center, where it had been since early 2020 for the Green Run test program that culminated a full-duration static-fire test on March 18.
"After being inspected by NASA and our team at arrival, @NASA_SLS Core Stage 1 is moving to the Vehicle Assembly Building," Boeing Space tweeted. "Today, it will travel at approximately 60 feet per minute. On the #Artemis I trip to the Moon, the rocket is built to hit Mach 23!"
When is the Launch Then?
The launch is expected to happen later this year. However, SpaceNews said NASA has not given a revised launch date for the uncrewed test flight. The arrival of the core stage at KSC was announced by NASA, but there was no talk of a launch date.
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The Artemis initiative, which is now on track to bring the first woman to the Moon in 2024, will also send the first person of color.
Nozzle N6007, seen here at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Strategic Fabrication Center in Los Angeles, California, is the fifth nozzle from the new production line that uses advanced manufacturing methods. The nozzle just completed hat band welding and will undergo heat treatment in a large furnace (shown in the background).
Just 12 people - all Americans and all men - have ever set foot on the Moon. However, the most recent landing occurred almost 50 years ago. The last mission of NASA's Apollo program, Apollo 17, took place in 1972.
As President Trump launched the Artemis initiative in 2019, the space agency promised to land the "first woman and next man" on the Moon within five years.
Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said the intention is still to fly Artemis 1 before the end of the year at a Space Transportation Association webinar on April 27. However, with some of the delays, he stated that this would be difficult.
He attributed the delays to technical difficulties faced by the core stage during the Green Run experiments and temperature and the pandemic. Later, Jurczyk said that those questions took up almost half of the leeway in the launch timeline for this year.
At KSC, this is the first time flow on a vehicle," he said. This is the first time they have been through the process of installing vehicle parts and doing prelaunch testing.
At his confirmation hearing on April 21, Bill Nelson, the Biden administration's candidate for NASA administrator, hinted that the launch could be delayed until next year. In the written version of his opening speech, he said the first of the Artemis missions launch within the next year," a period that would stretch until early 2022.
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