Artemis IV Forward Skirt Moves to Vertical Assembly Center for Next Phase of Production

Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans move the forward skirt, which will be used on the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s core stage for the agency’s Artemis IV mission, into the vertical assembly center on Dec. 2. Inside the tooling, the forward skirt receives its forward and aft rings through a circumferential friction-stir welding process. Seven rings are used in the production of the core stage. They provide stiffening for the dome structures on the propellant tanks and, as on the forward skirt, serve as attachment points for the major components to form the SLS core stage. The forward skirt 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.