NASA brought its mega moon rocket back into the shop for repairs.
What is it?
In the photo, the SLS rocket, topped with the Orion spacecraft, rolls into NASA’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday (Feb. 25) just as the sun was setting on the Space Coast.
NASA decided to roll SLS back into the VAB to deal with a helium flow malfunction. That problem was discovered shortly after a successful wet dress rehearsal, a test in which the rocket is fueled with propellants as it would be before an actual launch.
NASA had been eyeing an early March launch window for Artemis 2, but the mission will launch no earlier than April. When it flies, the mission will send a crew of four around the moon and back on a 10-day voyage.
Why is it amazing?
This photo shows off the staggering scale of SLS, the VAB, and the crawler-transporter vehicle that hauls the rocket to and from the launch pad.
This version of SLS stands 322 feet (98 meters) tall. When an SLS rocket launched on the Artemis 1 mission on Nov. 16, 2022, it was the world’s tallest and most powerful rocket to launch. SpaceX’s Starship now holds that record, though SLS remains the brawniest vehicle ever to reach Earth orbit.
To accommodate such a large vehicle, NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building has a height of 526 feet (160 m), and bears the distinction of being the largest single-story building in the world. The massive structure allows engineers to access every part of a rocket while it is being stacked and developed prior to flight.
A 130-foot-wide (40 m) path known as the crawlerway extends from the VAB to NASA’s two launch pads at Launch Complex 39, from which Artemis 2 will launch. A specialized vehicle known as the crawler-transporter (seen below the rocket in the photo) slowly rolls rockets between the launch pads there and the VAB at a speed of 1 mph (1.6 kph).
