A solid rocket booster segment that helped launch the Hubble Space Telescope, send the space shuttle Endeavour on its maiden mission and return John Glenn to orbit has arrived back at NASA’s Florida spaceport to lift off once again — this time as part of the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
The steel cylinder, which will help form one of the two, five-segment motors to be mounted to the Artemis 1 SLS core stage, was among the hardware that was delivered by train to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Friday (June 12). The segments’ cross-country journey began seven days earlier at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Promontory, Utah, where the hardware had been serviced and loaded with the solid propellant that will provide more than 75% of the initial thrust for the planned 2021 uncrewed launch.
The segments’ arrival on the Florida East Coast railroad marked the first delivery of the booster hardware in just over a decade. The last shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in support of the space shuttle was on May 27, 2010.
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