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The Artemis II rocket core stage, a long orange cylinder with four red boosters) is on its side as it rolls into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center while employees watch. The VAB is a tall rectangular building with the American flag and NASA "meatball" logo painted on its left and right side, respectively. There is also an Artemis logo on a lower portion of the building.
NASA/Kim Shiflett

Teams transport NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) core stage into the Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 24, 2024. Tugboats and towing vessels moved the Pegasus barge and 212-foot-long core stage 900-miles to the Florida spaceport from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where it was manufactured and assembled.

In the coming months, teams will integrate the rocket core stage atop the mobile launcher with the additional Artemis II flight hardware, including the twin solid rocket boosters, launch vehicle stage adapter, and the Orion spacecraft.

The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign, sending NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman, as well as CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back.

Follow the next steps in this journey on NASA’s Artemis blog.

Text credit: Jason Costa

Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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