Science and Exploration

Two SRBs Await The SLS Core Stage

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
May 7, 2021
Filed under ,
Two SRBs Await The SLS Core Stage

In this view looking up in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 26, 2021, the twin solid rocket boosters for the Artemis I mission are stacked on the mobile launcher for the Space Launch System (SLS).
Workers with Exploration Ground Systems and contractor Jacobs teams will stack the twin five-segment boosters on the mobile launcher over several weeks. When the core stage arrives, it will join the boosters on the mobile launcher, followed by the interim cryogenic propulsion stage and Orion spacecraft. Manufactured by Northrop Grumman in Utah, the twin boosters provide more than 75 percent of the total SLS thrust at launch.

The SLS is managed by Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Under the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and person of color on the Moon. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will test the Orion spacecraft and SLS as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon.

KSC-20210426-PH-FMX01_0032 Photo credit: NASA/Frank Michaux Larger image

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