Artemis I SLS LVSA Lift and Mate

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) sits in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), while teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems and contractor Jacobs integrate the launch vehicle stage adapter (LVSA) with the massive SLS core stage on the mobile launcher at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 22, 2021. Engineers used one of five VAB cranes to lift the adapter almost 250-feet in the air and then slowly lower it on to the core stage. The LVSA arrived at Kennedy from the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in July 2020 and has remained in the VAB for processing. During integration, known as “stacking,” the LVSA is bolted to the forward skirt of the core stage, connecting the core stage and the ICPS in preparation for the first flight of the rocket and the Orion spacecraft during Artemis I. The ICPS will provide Orion spacecraft with the push needed for its flight around the Moon. The ICPS’s RL10 engine will fit down inside the LVSA, which protects the engine during launch. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will test SLS and the Orion spacecraft as an integrated system prior to crewed flights in which NASA will land the first woman and person of color on the Moon.