The giant core stage of the Artemis II Moon Rocket trundled out of NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East early Tuesday on its way to a sea-going barge that will take it to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The 212-foot long rocket stage, which will provide the fuel thrust to deliver the Orion spacecraft into orbit, was loaded onto giant platforms and slowly pulled down Venus Street to the loading area on the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal.
A timeless flight
The Artemis II is scheduled to launch late next year and will be the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, in which four astronauts will fly by the moon. The Artemis program, which began in 2017, is aiming to establish a human presence on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The program also is expected to include the first woman, the first person of color…
