Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle’s two solid-fueled boosters.
Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch-orange core stage from its cradle in the VAB’s cavernous transfer aisle, the central passageway between the building’s four rocket assembly bays. The cranes then rotated the structure vertically, allowing workers to disconnect one of the cranes from the bottom of the rocket.
That left the rocket hanging on a 325-ton overhead crane, which would lift it over the transom into the building’s northeast high