Business is picking up for the Artemis teams at Kennedy Space Center — the core stage for Artemis 2 has arrived in Port Canaveral, after it traveled from its manufacturing site in Mississippi.

The barge is expected to berth overnight in the Port and then travel to Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, where the 212-foot-tall stage will be offloaded. After that, processing will begin in earnest for the assembly of the second Artemis rocket, which this time will carry four astronauts on board for a circumlunar mission.

As the main stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for Artemis 2, it was built by The Boeing Company in  NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility. Measuring some 65 m (212 ft) tall and 8.4 m (27.6 ft) in diameter, the core stage will contain approximately 987 t (2,177,000 lb) of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen cryogenic propellants when it stands ready for launch.

The core stage is powered by four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines, which generate approximately 7.44 MN (1,670,000 lb_f) of thrust — about 25% of the Space Launch System’s thrust at liftoff. Its duty cycle is approximately 500 seconds, and it will propel the rocket stack alone for the last 375 seconds of flight after two solid rocket boosters complete firing and are discarded. The core stage’s target will lift Artemis 2 to an altitude of approximately 162 km (531,380 ft) before separating and reentering the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. It is not a reusable component.

Author: Charles Boyer

NASA kid from Cocoa Beach, FL, born of Project Apollo parents and family. I’m a writer and photographer sharing the story of spaceflight from the Eastern Range here in Florida.