NASA completes SLS core stage stacking for Artemis 2 moon mission (photos)

NASA's next moon rocket is coming together, piece by piece.

The core stage of NASA's next Space Launch System (SLS) rocket recently completed integration with the vehicle's side boosters inside the agency's Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. SLS will launch NASA's Artemis 2 mission to fly four astronauts aboard an Orion spacecraft around the moon and back sometime next year.

"Technicians joined the core stage March 23 with the stacked solid rocket boosters for the mission at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC)," NASA officials wrote in a statement Monday (March 24). SLS's solid rocket boosters are responsible for lofting the 322-foot (98-meter), fully stacked vehicle through the first stage of launch. Each booster stands 177 feet (54 meters) tall, and together they provide more than three quarters of SLS's total thrust at liftoff.

Using one of the VAB's massive overhead cranes, technicians transferred the 212-foot (65-meter) SLS core stage from its recent home in High Bay 2, to the building's "transfer aisle" earlier this month. On Sunday (March 23), the stage was reoriented and moved to the facility's High Bay 3, where it has now joined with its solid rocket boosters atop the mobile launcher.

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Other parts of the Artemis 2 SLS have also come together in recent weeks as well, including the solar panels and spacecraft adapter jettison fairings on the mission's Orion capsule and European-built service module. In the coming months, the capsule and module will join the full SLS stack in the VAB, sitting atop the rocket's interim cryogenic propulsion stage.

Artemis 2 is the second mission of NASA's Artemis Program, meant to establish a long-term human presence on the moon. Artemis 1 launched an uncrewed Orion into lunar orbit and back in Nov. 2022. Artemis 2 will be the first crewed mission of the program, and will launch the first astronauts to circle the moon since the final Apollo flight in 1972.

Aboard Orion for the lunar loop-around will be NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman as Artemis 2 commander, Victor Glover as mission pilot and Christina Koch as mission specialist. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen will also be part of the crew. NASA has not yet announced the crew for Artemis 3, but has long billed it as the mission to send the first woman and first person of color to the lunar surface — astronauts Koch and Glover happen to fall into these categories, respectively. However, the language "first woman" and "first person of color" has recently been deleted from the agency's Artemis websites amid a push from the Trump administration to end Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) efforts.

NASA is currently targeting Spring 2026 for the launch of Artemis 2, with Artemis 3 scheduled to follow in 2027. The missions had been slated to launch in 2025 and 2026, but unexpected damage to Orion's heat shield during Artemis 1 prompted NASA to delay both by more than a year.