KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. – The core stage of NASA’s Space Launch System for Artemis II completed its journey to Kennedy Space Center Tuesday.
A massive barge brought the 212-foot booster to the spaceport 900 miles away from its manufacturing facility in New Orleans.
The core stage will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building where it will be stacked with twin 17-story solid rocket boosters.
Artemis II will be the first mission with astronauts under the program.
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Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen plan to become the first astronauts to orbit the moon in more than 50 years.
The entire Artemis program is very delayed, and very expensive, and now there’s another major issue that’s popped up.
It’s not with the rocket.
It’s with the crew’s capsule on top.
In May, News 6 reported how a new inspector general report found NASA still hadn’t figured out why the Orion’s charred heat shield got so badly damaged during reentry of Artemis I.
The astronauts will be coming in faster, and hotter, than any crew before.
“I think it is a very significant issue because the astronauts’ lives depend on this,” SpaceUpClose.com editor Dr. Ken Kremer said. “It’s coming back at 25,000 miles an hour, heating up to several thousands degrees so the heat shield must function, and because it has taken so long to figure out, we’ve already had a delay.”
The latest delay makes the launch slip until at least September of 2025.
A year after Artemis II, NASA plans to launch the third mission of the Artemis program.
Artemis III is when NASA astronauts are expected to land on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program.
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