Boeing finally completes SLS core stage, packs it for Mississippi tests

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  Boeing has completed the core stage of NASA's SLS rocket. [credit: NASA ]

On Wednesday, Boeing moved the completed core stage of NASA's Space Launch System rocket from the Michoud Assembly Facility onto the space agency's Pegasus Barge. When weather conditions are favorable, the barge will carry the 64-meter rocket from the rocket factory near New Orleans to the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi.

"It was a beautiful day here," said John Shannon, Boeing's program manager for the SLS rocket, in a teleconference with reporters. "We had a spectacular view of this new national asset."

Finishing assembly of the core stage represents an important milestone for Boeing, which has spent most of the 2010s working with NASA on designing the SLS rocket and building the first core stage. Boeing began cutting metal on the very first barrels for this core stage, which will fly NASA's Artemis 1 mission, back in 2015 at the Louisiana-based facility. NASA has spent nearly $10 billion on the SLS rocket's core-stage development so far.

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