The rocket that will carry NASA’s Artemis III mission is one step closer to launch.
The 212-foot-tall core stage of NASA’s SLS rocket was attached to its twin booster inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Teams will test the connections and the hardware now that it’s attached.
The next step is rolling the rocket parts out to Launch Complex 39B for fueling tests of the liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks on the rocket, along with a countdown simulation.
While part of NASA’s lunar missions, Artemis III will not venture to the moon. Instead, the mission is aimed at testing the docking capabilities of the Orion spacecraft with two different lunar landers in Earth’s orbit – one from SpaceX, the other from Blue Origin.
It’s a critical test of the hardware being developed by the commercial sector to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon in future missions, marking the first time astronauts return to the lunar surface since 1972.
The crew of Artemis III is made up of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas, and Frank Rubio, along with European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano from Italy. Douglas, who is from Miami, is the only rookie astronaut on the mission.
In a briefing last week, NASA leaders said that Artemis III is still planned for a launch in summer 2027. If all goes well, Artemis IV will take a crew to the lunar surface using one of those landers, launching in 2028.
