NASA Rocket Liquid Oxygen Tank Moves to Next Phase of Production

Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans move a liquid oxygen tank for its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket to a cleaning cell inside the facility’s vertical assembly building on Oct. 11. The tank, which will be used on the core stage of the agency’s Artemis III mission, will undergo an internal cleaning before moving on to its next phase of production. Inside the cleaning cell, a solution is sprayed into the tank to remove particulates which may collect during the manufacturing process. Once a tank is cleaned, teams use mobile clean rooms for internal access to the tank to prevent external contaminates from entering the hardware. The propellant tank is one of five major elements that make up the 212-foot-tall rocket stage. The core stage, along with its four RS-25 engines, produce more than two million pounds of thrust to help launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft, astronauts, and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit and to the lunar surface for Artemis.