Boeing’s Core Stage powered the historic Artemis I mission, lifting humankind one step closer to the Moon and paving the way for Mars exploration.
NASA declared the SLS core stage for Artemis I complete on Dec. 9, 2019, at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility. The New Orleans factory is where Boeing created a production system to build the SLS core and upper stages and avionics and to complete preliminary testing. After checkouts, employees escorted the first core stage to NASA’s Pegasus barge. It was the first time a completed rocket stage had shipped out of Michoud since the Apollo program.
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The Artemis I core stage traveled from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, for testing on the B-2 test stand used in the Apollo and shuttle eras. Boeing teams prepared the massive stand to receive the 212-foot (65-meter)-tall core stage, the largest NASA has ever built or tested. After days of careful handling, the core stage was safely lifted into the stand.
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The Green Run test series for the core stage took place over the next year. “Green” refers to the new hardware and “run” refers to operating it all together. Engineers turned the components on one by one to assess the stage, then fully fueled it. Green Run culminated in an eight-minute firing of the four engines through a “launch” and “ascent” while the fully operational stage remained locked into the test stand.
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Teams inspected and refurbished the core stage before removing it from the B-2 test stand at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and preparing it for shipment to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The stage traveled 900 miles (1,400 kilometers) on the NASA Pegasus barge, then was offloaded and rolled into the Vehicle Assembly Building. There, it was stacked on its mobile launcher between two solid rocket boosters.
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A launch vehicle stage adapter, Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage and Orion spacecraft stage adapter were added to the top of the Artemis I SLS core stage in a series of lifts in the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Tests performed during stacking included release and retraction of the rocket’s “umbilical” connections to the mobile launcher. SLS also successfully completed its design certification review.
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Crews added the Orion spacecraft and its launch abort system on top of the Orion stage adapter to complete the launch system for Artemis I.
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Boeing and other industry partners supported NASA as it completed more tests of the Artemis I system in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and practiced launch and mission operations. Across multiple rollouts in March, August and November of 2022, NASA moved the entire rocket through the VAB’s 456-foot (139-meter) door for a nearly 11-hour, 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) trip to launch pad 39B on a 6.6 million-pound (3 million-kilogram) crawler-transporter to undergo its final prelaunch tests.
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The SLS rocket attempted its first three wet dress rehearsals (WDR) in April 2022 before the successful WDR in June 2022. During these efforts, teams loaded, controlled and drained cryogenic propellants from the rocket’s core and upper stages and practiced a launch countdown.
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NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, powered by the Boeing-built core stage, lifted off at 1:47 a.m. ET on Nov. 16, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Eight and a half minutes into flight, the core stage completed its mission and separated from the upper stage of the rocket, sending NASA’s Orion spacecraft on its first journey around the Moon.
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