NASA's Artemis III Crewed Moon Mission Rocket Upper Stage Rolls to Space Coast

NASA's Artemis III Crewed Moon Mission Rocket Upper Stage Rolls to Space Coast

A key piece of hardware for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the agency’s Artemis III Moon Mission is on its way to the Space Coast in Florida. The journey for the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) began in Decatur, Alabama, where crews with United Launch Alliance first boxed it for shipment July 29, 2023, then loaded it onto ULA’s “RocketShip” barge July 31.

On the Artemis III Mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars. 

The barge will ferry the SLS flight hardware down the Mississippi River, into the Gulf of Mexico, then around the Florida peninsula to Cape Canaveral. Once it arrives at ULA’s facility in Florida near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the ICPS will undergo final testing and checkouts ahead of the crewed Artemis III mission. The ICPS is the in-space propulsion stage of the SLS rocket, giving NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Artemis astronauts inside it the big push they need to journey all the way to the Moon for a lunar landing. The ICPS for Artemis III is the last of its kind as missions beginning with Artemis IV will use the SLS B1B configuration that includes the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage.

Watch this video to learn more about the preparations for its waterway journey. 

Learn more about the SLS rocket: nasa.gov/sls

Follow updates on the Artemis blog: 

https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/

Credit: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)

Duration: 2 minutes, 55 seconds

Release Date: Aug. 9, 2023

#NASA #ESA #Space #Moon #ArtemisProgram #ArtemisIII #CrewedMission #Astronauts #NASASLS #SpaceLaunchSystem #ICPS #DeepSpace #MoonToMars #Science #SpaceEngineering #SpaceTechnology #HumanSpaceflight #SolarSystem #SpaceExploration #ULA #MSFC #Alabama #Barge #SpaceCoast #Florida #UnitedStates #Europe #History #STEM #Education #HD #Video