Artemis I Booster Segment Mate Pinning

Inside the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Pablo Martinez, a handling, mechanical and structures engineer on the Jacobs Technology Inc. Test and Operations Support Contract, inserts the first of many pins that will secure the Space Launch System’s (SLS) right-hand motor segment to the rocket’s right-hand aft skirt. The right-hand motor segment is one of five segments that makes up one of two solid rocket boosters. Once the aft segments are mated to the two aft skirts, they will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking on the mobile launcher. Manufactured by Northrop Grumman in Utah, the twin boosters provide more than 75 percent of the total SLS thrust at launch. Under the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024. 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.