Artemis III Liquid Oxygen Tank Moves to Vertical Configuration at Michoud

Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans lift a liquid oxygen tank from a horizontal to a vertical position and place it into a production cell on July 12. The process, called a breakover, will allow technicians to rappel into the empty tank and install its aft sump subassembly, securing it from the inside. This tank will be used on the core stage of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for its Artemis III mission. 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.