NASA Artemis III Moon Rocket: Liquid Oxygen Fuel Tank Prepared for Cleaning

NASA Artemis III Moon Rocket: Liquid Oxygen Fuel Tank Prepared for Cleaning

These are examples of impressive NASA photos for 2024. This flight hardware will be used for Artemis III—one of the first crewed Artemis Moon missions. Together with its four RS-25 engines, the rocket’s massive 212-foot-tall core stage—the largest stage NASA has ever built—and its twin solid rocket boosters produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust to send NASA’s Orion spacecraft, astronauts and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit to the Moon and, ultimately, Mars.

Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans install wash probes into a liquid oxygen tank inside the factory’s cleaning cell on Oct. 25, 2024. This tank will be used on the core stage of the agency’s SLS rocket for its Artemis III mission. It will undergo an internal cleaning before moving on to its next phase of production. Inside the cleaning cell, a solution is sprayed into the tank to remove particulates that may collect during the manufacturing process. Once a tank is cleaned, teams use mobile clean rooms for internal access to the tank to prevent external contaminates from entering the hardware.

The propellant tank is one of five major elements that make up the 212-foot-tall rocket stage. No other rocket is capable of carrying astronauts in Orion around the Moon in a single mission.

Follow updates on the Artemis blog: 

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

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS)

https://www.nasa.gov/sls

NASA's Artemis III Mission:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/

Read the Artemis Plan (74-page PDF Free Download): 

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/artemis_plan-20200921.pdf

NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF)

https://www.nasa.gov/michoud-assembly-facility/

Image Credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker
Image Date: Oct. 10, 2024

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