Artemis III Core Stage Horizontal in VAB Transfer Aisle; Artemis II Orion De-Servicing Underway at MPPF — Day 29 Post-Splashdown

At Kennedy Space Center on April 29 — day 29 post-Artemis II splashdown — two parallel post-flight and pre-flight operations advanced simultaneously. In the Vehicle Assembly Building, Artemis III's SLS core stage (arrived April 28) was positioned horizontally in the VAB transfer aisle ahead of its vertical lift into High Bay 2, where it will be mated with its engine section and boat-tail assembled in August 2025. VAB crane crews conducted rigging inspections and clearance verifications before the planned vertical lift, which will connect the 212-foot core stage segment to the pre-positioned engine section using the 325-ton crane system. At the Multi-Payload Processing Facility, Artemis II Orion de-servicing operations continued: technicians removed crew experiment packages and personal items, extracted avionics units for refurbishment and reuse on future Orion vehicles, and continued offloading residual propellants from the service module tanks. The 30-day formal heat shield inspection — Marshall Space Flight Center X-ray scans and Avcoat block sample extractions — continued on schedule with comprehensive documentation of each block's ablative performance. The Artemis II crew (Wiseman, Glover, Koch, Hansen) remained at JSC completing physiological reconditioning, now in week five post-splashdown, with return-to-normal cardiovascular, bone density, and muscle strength metrics being monitored by the Human Research Program.