Members of the Artemis II crew meet with NASA’s Pegasus shuttle crew before they depart to deliver the main stage of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket to the Space Coast.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission pilot Victor Glover met the crew on July 15.
NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, commander, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist, visited the barge on July 16 just before flight hardware was loaded onto it.
Pegasus is currently transporting the SLS core stage from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will be assembled and prepared for launch. During the Artemis II test mission, its core stage of four RS-25 engines will provide more than 2 million pounds of thrust to help send the Artemis II crew around the Moon.
Pegasus, previously used to transport space shuttle tanks, has been modified and refurbished to travel on the SLS rocket’s massive core. At 212 feet long and 27.6 feet in diameter, the moon rocket stage is more than 50 feet longer than the space shuttle’s outer tank.
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NASA is working to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon under Artemis. SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with the Orion spacecraft, advanced spacesuits and rovers, lunar orbiters, and commercial human landing systems. Orion, the SLS, is the only rocket capable of sending astronauts and supplies to the Moon in a single launch.
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