KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. – The explosion Thursday night of the SpaceX Starship was a reminder that there’s only rocket right now that NASA says is capable of reaching the moon.
That hardware of the Space Launch System is being prepared right now for the Artemis II launch, the first of the program with astronauts.
Before the crew can fly around the moon, though, their rocket and capsule have to be put together.
News 6 reporter James Sparvero was given access Friday at Kennedy Space Center to see where that meticulous process stands. Kirk Shireman of Lockheed Martin said he’s very excited.
“We’re almost to the finish line, and I can feel it. I think our workforce feels it,” the Orion program manager said.
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Inside the same building where the four astronauts will put on their spacesuits on launch day, their capsule was outfitted with its solar arrays.
“Tomorrow, we’re gonna start encapsulating those solar arrays in the final fairing of the vehicle,” Shireman said.
An issue with Orion that emerged after the Artemis I launch in 2022 was its heat shield cracked during reentry.
In December, NASA said it finally figured out what went wrong, and this time, with the crew onboard, Orion will reenter the atmosphere on a different path.
”It had to do with the trajectory and the fact that it could create these little gas bubbles underneath that layer,” Shireman said. “For Artemis II, we’re not going as far downrange so we’re just gonna come in and keep coming all the way down.”
Across the space center property at the Vehicle Assembly Building, NASA has stacked its 17-story solid rocket boosters of the Space Launch System.
”As you see, the boosters are stacked, and we have the core stage next door getting ready to come over,” Cliff Lanham explained. “So by the end of May, we should have the core stage stacked.”
Lanham is a leader of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program and went through the process of stacking the rocket for Artemis I.
He said that with crew onboard this time, there’s an added responsibility for safety.
“The biggest thing is: we don’t rush,” Lanham said. “Now that you got people on it, you stop and think just a little, you know, let me take that extra pause and make sure everything’s good.”
When it’s all stacked, NASA will move the SLS out of those high bay doors of the VAB and on its way to the launch pad.
After a couple of years of delays, NASA’s now hoping to launch Artemis II in April of next year.