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NASA is gearing up for its extremely ambitious next Moon mission, which will see a crew of astronauts taking two separate Human Landing Systems spacecraft being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX for a joyride in Earth’s orbit to test their docking capabilities.
The mission, dubbed Artemis 3, will set the stage for the first crewed Moon landing attempt in 2028. To prepare, though, the agency fell back on some distinctly terrestrial transportation: by loading parts of its enormous Space Launch System rocket onto a massive train.
The train was spotted rolling through Wyoming earlier this week, as local publication Cowboy State Daily reports.
The train, which featured a commemorative, star-spangled Union Pacific locomotive celebrating President Donald Trump, departed from its point of origin at Northrop Grumman’s Railyard Shipping Facility in Corinne, Utah, on June 2, arriving at Florida’s Space Coast six days later.
“Later this year, teams will begin stacking the boosters that create 75 percent of the thrust needed at launch,” NASA’s Artemis X account wrote.
The train was carrying the last two of eight solid rocket-booster motor segments. All together, the rocket’s iconic twin solid rocket boosters will generate 7.2 million pounds of thrust during liftoff.
The core stage of the rocket arrived at NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA Kennedy in late April and is awaiting integration with its two 17-story-tall boosters. The core stage’s four RS-25 rocket engines produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust alone.
It’s an already proven design. NASA successfully used its Space Launch System rocket to send a crew of four astronauts around the Moon and back as part of its Artemis 2 mission earlier this year, as well as an uncrewed mission in late 2022.
Artemis 3 is currently still scheduled to launch sometime next year. However, delays — and massive explosions — plaguing its key contractors, SpaceX and Blue Origin, could force NASA to once again push back the date.
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