NASA rocket making slow sea voyage before launch later this year

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket core stage is on its way to the Kennedy Space Center. Early last week, the 212-foot rocket was lifted out of the B-2 Test stand at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and loaded aboard the barge Pegasus for the slow trip.

The barge has previously served NASA's space shuttle program for 15 years transporting external tanks from the same Louisiana facility where the SLS core stage was also built to Kennedy Space Center. It was redesigned in 2014 by The Army Corps of Engineers Marine Design Center in Philadelphia.

A 115-foot section was removed and replaced with a 165-foot section enabling the barge to accommodate not only the additional length, but also the additional 600,000 pounds of ground support, transportation equipment and rocket.

Pegasus has generators onboard to run the ship's systems but no propulsion of its own. After smaller tugs escort it down the Pearl River, Pegasus is met by an ocean-going tugboat which completes the 900-mile journey across the Gulf of Mexico and around the tip of Florida. It passed Key West this morning and will continue along Florida's Atlantic coast for arrival on Tuesday.

NASA has transported large rockets and their hardware via barge for decades. Like the Poseidon and Orion barges that once carried Saturn rocket stages and hardware for the Apollo Program, Pegasus will pass through Port Canaveral, past cruise ships and fishing boats, through the locks, and up the Banana River to the turning basin next to the historic countdown clock at the Press Site dating back to the Apollo era.

The booster will be unloaded from Pegasus and towed across the street to the Vehicle Assembly Building where it will be mated with waiting rocket motors in preparation for the launch of Artemis I later this year.

While that uncrewed Artemis I mission will reach 24,500 mph to test SLS and Orion spacecraft as an integrated system in a trip around the Moon, at last check it was rounding the tip of Florida at a comfortable 12 mph (10 knots).