Following a cost-saving summer slowdown, NASA Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage prime contractor Boeing is again working two shifts a day at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans to complete final testing and checkout of the unit that will help send NASA astronauts back to the Moon on the Artemis II mission. Boeing plans to complete testing around the end of November, which would leave a few weeks of final thermal protection system (TPS) and configuration work to complete Core Stage-2 (CS-2) by the end of the year.
NASA approved reducing work activity on the stage down to a single work shift in the summer when issues with a supplier finishing liquid oxygen (LOX) feedline parts delayed their delivery until late September. Although Boeing may complete the stage by the new year, the space agency has not said when it will ship the stage to its Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch site.