NASA engineers will complete the assembly of the massive rocket.
NASA engineers will complete the assembly of the massive rocket. The Artemis II astronauts may have just returned from a successful mission to the moon, but NASA engineers are already preparing for the upcoming Artemis III launch.
The largest section of the rocket for the Artemis III mission arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, on Monday, according to NASA. The 212-foot-long Space Launch System core stage was manufactured at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans before traveling 900 miles aboard a barge to the space center, where the complete assembly will take place. The core stage contains the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank and forward skirt, according to NASA.
On Tuesday, the top four-fifths of the core stage were transported to NASA's Vehicle Assembly, where it will be integrated with the boat-tail and engine section to complete the full stage assembly. NASA hosted a live stream of the unloading and transportation of the core stage to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The historic 10-day Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1 and splashed down on April 10, took the four-person crew on a 694,481-mile journey around the moon.
The lunar fly-by allowed the astronauts to observe unprecedented views of the moon's Orientale basin with the human eye for the first time. The next mission, Artemis III, will test rendezvous and docking capabilities between the Orion spacecraft and commercial spacecraft that will be used to land astronauts on the moon. The demonstration mission in low Earth orbit will test one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.
The Artemis III crew is expected to launch Orion on the SLS rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in late 2027, according to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. Humanity will return to the moon's surface during the Artemis IV mission, expected to launch in 2028, according to NASA. The current plan for Artemis IV calls for the astronauts to travel to lunar orbit, where crew members will descend to the surface near the South Pole of the moon to conduct tests.
They will then rejoin the rest of the crew in lunar orbit and journey back to Earth. Copyright © 2026 ABC News Internet Ventures.
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