NASA Connects All Major Structures of Artemis II Moon Rocket Core Stage

The Artemis II moon rocket core stage is now fully assembled. Next major milestones is installing its four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines.

“The Boeing team at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans recently finished attaching the engine section to the remaining four-fifths of Core Stage 2 for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will fly the Artemis II mission.

The next major milestones include installing 4 RS-25 engines, followed by final integration testing before readying the vehicle for delivery to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to be joined with other rocket components needed to complete the launch vehicle.

This Artemis II hardware will help lift a crewed mission to deep space for the first time in 50 years.” – via Boeing

Image credit: NASA / Michael DeMocker

“Teams with NASA and Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have fully integrated all five major structures of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s core stage for Artemis II, the first Artemis mission that will send four astronauts around the Moon and return them home. Technicians joined the engine section to the rest of the rocket stage March 17. Next, teams will integrate the four RS-25 engines to the engine section to complete the stage.

Located at the bottom of the 212-foot-tall core stage, the engine section is the most complex and intricate part of the rocket stage, helping to power Artemis missions to the Moon. In addition to its miles of cabling and hundreds of sensors, the engine section is a crucial attachment point for the RS-25 engines and two solid rocket boosters that produce a combined 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. It houses the engines and includes vital systems for mounting, controlling, and delivering fuel from the propellant tanks to the engines.” – via NASA Image and Video Library

Passive Roller Stands

Futuramic’s Passive Roller Stands at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility

The Passive Roller Stand (PRS) Tool facilitates the SLS LH2 tank to the Intertank and Engine Section. This is not a singular tool, but a system of tools designed to work together clocking and aligning the stack so the 360 tight tolerance structural fasteners to be installed.

The tool system consists of the:

• Two Passive Roller Stands
• Four Hydraulic Jacks
• Four Air Bearing stands for the Hydraulic Jacks
• Four OHME

Boeing, NASA, and Futuramic teams worked as one seamless integrated team to rapidly start from a very high level deceptively simple SOW. The result was a flawless tool delivered in record time meeting all Boeing and NASA tooling requirements. No short cuts were taken, the accelerated delivery was the result of a single purpose focused collaborative team.