Early 2026 is when NASA aims to launch its astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremey Hansen on the Artemis 2 mission around the Moon and back.
For more than two years at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency has been assembling the various pieces of the 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket, topped with the Orion spacecraft, that will carry the four astronauts on a ten-day journey.
Now that the rocket is complete, here’s a comprehensive overview of how the launch vehicle came together, piece by piece, as the mission’s launch date was impacted by launch delays, stemming from learnings derived from the Artemis 1 mission in November 2022.
Additional video from NASA.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:32 It began with a train…
01:42 Mission delayed
03:19 Core stage arrival
03:48 VAB stacking begins
04:12 Mission delayed, again
05:36 Core stage on the move
05:45 Industry day update
07:42 Solid rocket booster stacking picks up
07:55 Core stage final move
08:16 Upper stage assembly
08:43 Orion hits the road
10:00 Conclusion
Credit to : Spaceflight Now