Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans use an overhead crane to lift a 51-foot-tall liquid oxygen tank out of the vertical assembly center on May 26. The liquid oxygen tank will form part of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for NASA’s Artemis IV mission to the Moon. It will hold more than 196,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen; and next, technicians with Boeing, SLS core stage prime contractor, and NASA will perform dimensional inspections and install internal baffles on the propellant tank before the next phase of production. The propellant tank is one of five major elements that make up the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket stage. The core stage, along with its four RS-25 engines at its base, produces more than two million pounds of thrust to help launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft, stronauts, and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit and to the lunar surface for Artemis.
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