Photo: Charles Boyer / Florida Media Now
After berthing in the Turn Basin by the Press Center yesterday, the Core Stage of Artemis II was offloaded today and moved into the VAB. The process began around 9 a.m. EDT and took nearly three hours until the 212-foot rocket traveled the relatively short distance—perhaps 1/2 kilometer—to the VAB.
After the two Solid Rocket Boosters for Artemis II are assembled in the VAB, the Core Stage will then be mounted between the them. The ten segments for those SRBs are already at Kennedy Space Center, in storage in the Rotation, Processing, and Surge Facility, located just north of the VAB at Kennedy Space Center.
Daniel Jimenez, Operations Project Engineer (OPE) within the Vehicle Integration and Launch branch of the Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) Program said yesterday that the SRBs are “Essentially primed and ready to go. What’s left for the VAB is obviously get all the facility ready.”
Jiminez also mentioned that Mobile Launch Platform that will be used for Artemis II is currently out at Pad LC-39B, where it is being set up for the launch of Artemis II. “More importantly, we get the ground systems ready,” he said, “So, we’re finishing up all of the testing of the systems that we have for Artemis II. It’s a crewed mission. So there are some systems that have to be updated for the Mobile Launcher Platform. That’s out at the pad.”
Later this summer, the testing will be completed, the VAB prepared and configured and then in the fall, the assembly of Artemis II will begin in earnest.
