NASA Releases New Video Highlighting Manufacturing Progress for Artemis II

This video highlights the latest progress in manufacturing the second core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the world’s most powerful rocket, for the first crewed mission of the agency’s Artemis program. Together with four RS-25 engines, the rocket’s massive 212-foot-tall core stage — the largest stage NASA has ever built — and its twin solid rocket boosters will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust to send NASA’s Orion spacecraft, astronauts and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit to the Moon. The core stage and its five major structures are manufactured and assembled at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. With the first core stage for Artemis I, the first mission of SLS and Orion, undergoing Green Run testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Michoud teams are manufacturing and assembling the core stage for Artemis II, the first crewed mission of Orion and SLS. NASA is working to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024. The agency’s SLS rocket offers more payload mass, volume capability and energy to speed missions through deep space and enable NASA’s Artemis lunar program. SLS, along with Orion, the human landing system, and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon are NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration. No other rocket is capable of carrying astronauts in Orion around the Moon in a single mission.