Artemis II Core Stage rolls out, leaves New Orleans

Under a blistering Louisiana sun, the Artemis II core stage left the Michoud Assembly Facility this morning in New Orleans. This is the core of the massive SLS rocket that will take four astronauts to orbit the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.

By design, the festivities began early Tuesday morning. To avoid the heat and the pop-up showers that comes with a tropical climate in the summer, crews began moving the 212 foot long core stage just after sunrise. Its destination: Pegasus.

The uniquely shaped barge named Pegasus has been a workhorse of the waterways for NASA. Since the days of Apollo, Pegasus and other barges like it have carried large pieces of NASA hardware to and from multiple locations around the country.

Similar to the Artemis I core rollout, the process was given a sendoff by teams who work at the facility and program managers giving short speeches praising the efforts of those who built the core stage and offering up their hopes for the future of the Artemis program. The last two to speak were two of the crew members of Artemis II who will ride atop this very rocket: mission commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The team in charge of moving this massive piece of rocket hardware wasted no time in making the approximately 1 1/4 mile journey. Once they started, they didn’t stop until they reached the waiting barge. In fact, they were so far ahead of schedule, speakers were still talking on stage and a flyover from two local Louisiana Air National Guard F-15’s occurred long after the core stage was around the bend and out of view.

There were some jokes about the speed of the move. But the feeling of the crowd was one of excitement. All of these hands that played big and small parts in the construction of Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy’s ride to the moon were happy to see the fruits of their labor ride off to fulfill its destiny. And to their credit, once the band was done and the microphones were off, all of these folks went right back inside to continue working on the next core stages. And to get out of the heat.

Check out the full gallery from this morning’s rollout below!