The Space Launch System (SLS) program heralds the arrival of the SLS core stage with a symbolic “passing of the baton” to NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) on April 28, 2021, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the transition into final preparations for flight. Journeying from NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi aboard the Pegasus barge, the core stage arrived at the Florida spaceport on April 27. It is the final piece of Artemis hardware to arrive at Kennedy and will be offloaded and moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be prepared for integration atop the mobile launcher with the completed stack of solid rocket boosters ahead of the Artemis I launch. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will test SLS and Orion as an integrated system prior to crewed flights to the Moon.
Photo credit: NASA/Sam Lott