NASA starts assembling Artemis moon mission rocket

Washington, Nov 26 : In preparation for the Artemis I launch next year, NASA has stacked the first piece of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on the mobile launcher.
Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight to test the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon in the Artemis programme.
Stacking operations began on November 19 with engineers transporting a booster segment from the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility to the 525-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
Each booster consists of five segments and will provide seven million pounds of thrust for the liftoff from Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the US space agency said this week.
When assembled, each booster will be about half the length of a football field, and together they will generate more thrust than 14 four-engine jumbo commercial airliners.
Once stacked, the SLS rocket will stand taller than the Statue of Liberty and have about 15 per cent more thrust at liftoff than the Apollo programme Saturn V rocket, making it the most powerful rocket ever built, NASA said.