RELEASE: 24-112
New
Hardware for Future Artemis Moon Missions Arrive at NASA Kennedy
On the left, the Canopee transport carrier containing the European Service Module for NASA’s Artemis III mission arrives at Port Canaveral in
Florida, on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024, before completing the last leg of its journey to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center’s Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout via truck. On the right, NASA’s Pegasus barge, carrying several pieces of hardware for Artemis
II, III, and IV arrives at NASA Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39 turn basin wharf on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. Credit: NASA.
From across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Gulf of Mexico, two ships converged, delivering key spacecraft and rocket components of NASA's
Artemis
campaign to the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On Sept. 3, ESA (European Space Agency) marked a milestone in the
Artemis III
mission as its European-built service module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft completed a transatlantic journey from Bremen, Germany, to Port Canaveral, Florida, where technicians moved it to nearby NASA Kennedy. Transported aboard the
Canopée
cargo ship, the European Service Module—assembled by Airbus with components from 10 European countries and the U.S.—provides propulsion, thermal control, electrical power, and water and oxygen for its crews.
“Seeing multi-mission hardware arrive at the same time demonstrates the progress we are making
on our Artemis missions,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We are going to the Moon together with our industry and international partners and we are manufacturing, assembling, building,
and integrating elements for Artemis flights.”
NASA's
Pegasus
barge, the agency's waterway workhorse for transporting large hardware by sea, ferried multi-mission hardware for the agency’s
SLS
(Space Launch System) rocket, the
Artemis II
launch vehicle stage adapter, the “boat-tail” of the core stage for Artemis III, the core stage engine section for Artemis IV, along with ground support equipment needed to move and assemble the large components. The barge pulled into NASA Kennedy’s Launch
Complex 39B Turn Basin Thursday.
The spacecraft factory inside NASA Kennedy’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building
is set to buzz with additional activity in the coming months. With the Artemis II Orion crew and service modules stacked together and undergoing testing, and engineers outfitting the Artemis III and IV crew modules, engineers soon will connect the newly arrived
European Service Module to the crew module adapter, which
houses electronic equipment for communications, power, and control, and includes an umbilical connector that bridges the electrical, data, and fluid systems between the crew and service modules.
The SLS rocket’s cone-shaped
launch vehicle stage adapter
connects the core stage to the upper stage
and protects the rocket’s flight computers, avionics, and electrical devices in the upper stage system during launch and ascent. The adapter will be taken to Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building in preparation for Artemis II rocket stacking operations.
The boat-tail, which will be used during the assembly of the SLS core stage for
Artemis III, is a fairing-like structure that protects the bottom end of the core stage and
RS-25
engines. This hardware, picked up at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility
in New Orleans, will join the Artemis
III core stage engine section housed in the spaceport’s Space Systems
Processing Facility.
The Artemis IV SLS core stage engine section arrived from NASA Michoud and also
will transfer to the center’s processing facility ahead of final assembly.
Under the
Artemis
campaign, NASA will land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international
partner astronaut on the lunar surface, establishing long-term exploration for scientific discovery and preparing for human missions to Mars. The agency’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, and supporting ground systems, along with the human landing system,
next-generation spacesuits and rovers, and Gateway, serve as NASA’s foundation for deep space exploration.
For more information on NASA’s Artemis missions, visit:
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