NASA rocket hardware for Artemis II, III and IV moon missions arrives at Kennedy Space Center

Maneuvering within the waters of NASA's Turning Basin, a pair of tugboats gingerly pushed the massive Pegasus barge against the bulkhead Tuesday morning near the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building.

The huge NASA barge's one-of-a-kind cargo: jumbo-sized rocket pieces for the upcoming Artemis II, III and IV moon missions.

"As we get new pieces of hardware coming in, it helps us and the workforce just maintain that excitability for the launches," said Matt Czech, deputy flow director for Exploration Ground Systems at KSC.

"Our launch spacing is not the same as some of our commercial providers. Our mission is different, right? So when you get these pieces of hardware coming in, you can see it. It's tangible. As they get moved around, it's nice to be able to see what you're working on and working towards," Czech said.

Cape Canaveral: Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, NASA, Blue Origin rocket launch schedule from Florida

Artemis II to send 4 astronauts on a lunar flyby

Weather permitting, crews are scheduled to offload the Artemis flight hardware from Pegasus from early Friday morning to Saturday morning before the 310-foot-long barge departs Sunday.

That includes the cone-shaped, 27?-foot-tall Artemis II launch vehicle stage adapter, which rolled out of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on Aug. 21 for transport to KSC. Czech said the LVSA will be fitted between the top of the rocket core stage and the bottom of the second stage.

Slated for launch in September 2025, Artemis II will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby during their 10-day mission. The Artemis II crew: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist).

Two other key components aboard Pegasus include the Artemis III core stage boat tail section and the Artemis IV core stage engine section, which are packed inside storage containers. Crews will roll them to the Space Station Processing Facility.

The Artemis III mission will send two crew members to the moon's surface to spend about a week near the south pole — a monthlong mission scheduled for launch no earlier than September 2026. Artemis IV astronauts will use the first modules of the world's first lunar space station, Gateway.

"Every time we get a big piece of flight hardware like this coming in, it's one more piece of the puzzle as we get to Artemis II and III and IV, as this campaign and this program matures," Czech said.

Thursday's Pegasus delivery joined the Artemis III Orion spacecraft service module that arrived Tuesday at Port Canaveral aboard Canopee, the European Space Agency's wind-powered cargo ship.

"The spacecraft factory inside NASA Kennedy’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building is set to buzz with additional activity in the coming months," a NASA press release said.

"With the Artemis II Orion crew and service modules stacked together and undergoing testing, and engineers outfitting the Artemis III and IV crew modules, engineers soon will connect the newly arrived European Service Module to the crew module adapter, which houses electronic equipment for communications, power, and control, and includes an umbilical connector that bridges the electrical, data, and fluid systems between the crew and service modules," the press release said.

Czech said Pegasus navigated a winding trek along various rivers and the Gulf of Mexico before reaching the Florida peninsula. In July, the great barge delivered the orange Artemis II core stage, which drew nearly 50 photographers and reporters to KSC as the rocket segment slowly rolled into the VAB.

"This is a golden era of space exploration. Because we're going back to the moon after a half-century in order to learn, so that we can take humans all the way to Mars," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, standing next to the Artemis II core stage inside the VAB in a social media video released Thursday.

"And this is the workhorse that's going to start out this whole trip," Nelson said, pointing at the core stage.

For the latest news and launch schedule from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.

Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at [email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1

Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA's Artemis II, III and IV moon rocket components arrive in Florida