NASA Photographers Capture Aerial Views of Pegasus Barge with Artemis II Rocket Stage

NASA photographers Evan Deroche and Brandon Hancock joined the U.S. Coast Guard in an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter to capture aerial views of NASA’s Pegasus barge just after it departed NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans July 17 with the core stage of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for Artemis II. These photos and videos show the barge as it traveled down the Intracoastal Waterway to the Gulf of Mexico. Pegasus ferried the Artemis II core stage more than 900 miles to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It arrived with the flight hardware July 22. The barge is maintained at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the core stage is fully manufactured. NASA is working to land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the Moon under Artemis. SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with the Orion spacecraft, supporting ground systems, advanced spacesuits and rovers, the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, and commercial human landing systems. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch.