New equipment has been installed in High Bay 2 of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to enable the vertical integration of the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage. In order to finish vertical work before stacking the fully assembled core stage on mobile launcher 1, teams suspended it 225 feet in the air inside the high bay in mid-December. This allowed teams to continue stacking solid rocket boosters for Artemis II inside High Bay 3 at the same time.
The relocation to High Bay 2 has given NASA and Boeing personnel internal and external 360-degree tip-to-tail access to the core stage. Futuramic Tool and Engineering, a supplier based in Michigan, was in charge of designing and constructing the Core Stage Vertical Integration Center tool, which is responsible for keeping the core stage vertical.
“High Bay 2 tooling was originally scheduled to be complete for Artemis III. We had an opportunity to get it done earlier and that will put us in a good posture to complete work earlier than planned prior to moving the core stage for Artemis II into the full integrated stack over into in High Bay 3,” said Chad Bryant, deputy manager of the NASA SLS Stages Office. “This gives us an opportunity to go in and learn how to rotate, lift, and move the core stage into the high bay.”
In addition to providing engineers with simultaneous access to High Bay 2 and High Bay 3, this shift doubles the VAB’s usable space footprint. Additionally, it frees up space at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans for the ongoing development of the individual components for upcoming SLS core stages.
High Bay 2, one of the four high bays inside the VAB, has a lengthy history of assisting NASA exploration programs. During Apollo, the Saturn V rocket was stacked in High Bay 2. The high bay served as both an additional storage space for the shuttle and a location for external tank checkout and storage during the Space Shuttle Program.
NASA Michoud will continue to fully produce and fabricate all of the key structures for the SLS core stage under the new assembly methodology starting with Artemis III. The engine part will be delivered to Kennedy for final outfitting when manufacture and thermal protection system application are finished.
“Core stage 3 marks a significant change in the way we build core stages,” said Steve Wofford, manager of the SLS Stages Office. “The vertical capability in High Bay 2 allows us to perform parallel processing from the top to bottom of the stage. It’s a much more efficient way to build core stages. This new capability will streamline final production efforts, allowing our team to have 360-degree access to the stage, both internally and externally.”
After arriving at Kennedy on July 23rd, the completely built Artemis II core stage stayed horizontal inside the VAB transfer aisle until it was recently lifted into the newly equipped high bay.
The remaining Artemis III core stage components are being outfitted by NASA Michoud teams in anticipation of their horizontal joining. In 2025, the four RS-25 engines for the Artemis III mission will be delivered to NASA Kennedy from NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. At NASA Michoud, significant core stage and exploratory upper stage structures are being developed for Artemis IV and beyond.
Under Artemis, NASA is aiming to send its first foreign partner astronaut, a woman, and a person of color to the moon. Together with the Orion spacecraft, SLS forms NASA’s core for deep space exploration. It supports ground systems, sophisticated spacesuits and rovers, the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, and commercial human landing technologies. The only rocket capable of delivering Orion, crews, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch is SLS.
