Boeing (www.boeing.com) recently delivered the core stage of NASA’s first Space Launch System (SLS) deep-space exploration rocket, moving it out of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the agency’s Pegasus barge.

The event marked the first time a completed rocket stage has been shipped out of Michoud since the end of the Apollo programme. SLS Core Stage 1 is the largest single rocket stage ever built by NASA and its industry partners.

The roll-out followed several weeks of final testing and check-outs, prior to it being shipped to NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for hot-fire engine tests later this year.

After inspection and refurbishing for launch, the stage will be moved to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will be integrated with the Interim Cryogenic Upper Stage and NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the un-crewed Artemis I mission around the Moon (this will be the first launch of a ‘human-rated’ spacecraft to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972).

John Shannon, Boeing’s SLS programme manager, said: “Our SLS team has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with NASA and our supplier partners to face multiple challenges with ingenuity and perseverance, while keeping safety and quality at the forefront.

"We are applying what we have learned from development of the first core stage to accelerate work on core stages 2 and 3 — already in production at Michoud — as well as the Exploration Upper Stage that will power NASA’s most ambitious Artemis missions.”