Spotted near KSC: Crew access arm for NASA's next-generation SLS rocket

New hardware that will allow astronauts to traverse the divide between a launch tower and NASA's next-generation rocket is awaiting its eventual installation just outside Kennedy Space Center.

A crew access arm, built in Cocoa before its mid-October transport via U.S. Route 1, sits in a parking lot just west of the 54-year-old Indian River Bridge that connects State Road 405 in southern Titusville to the spaceport and the KSC Visitor Complex.

KSC's public affairs office told FLORIDA TODAY that the hardware will be loaded onto a transporter on Nov. 9 and moved to the mobile launcher, which sits near the Vehicle Assembly Building, for installation between Dec. 18 and 22.

In the meantime, teams are installing hinges onto the access arm and making other minor modifications.

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NASA's mobile launcher, a 380-foot-tall remnant of the cancelled Constellation program, is currently being modified to host the agency's massive Space Launch System rocket. The first SLS launch on Exploration Mission 1, or EM-1, is targeted for no earlier than late 2019.

With the help of an updated Apollo-era crawler-transporter, the mobile launcher will be moved to pad 39B with the 322-foot-tall rocket and an uncrewed Orion capsule. The platform and its tower will provide power, fuel, communications and other connections up until the mission's first launch to orbit the moon for several days before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

While the first SLS mission will be uncrewed, teams will still use it to access to the Orion spacecraft before launch while astronauts will walk across it for the first crewed mission, which is expected no earlier than 2022.

The SLS rocket itself, meanwhile, also crossed a notable threshold in October – the four former space shuttle engines that will vault it off the pad are ready to be attached to the core stage, and will eventually join two solid rocket booster segments to produce 8.4 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

NASA's crew access arm, however, wasn't the only piece of space hardware seen in the area on Tuesday. Two massive, yellow overhead crane rails for Blue Origin's rocket factory at KSC's Exploration Park were also at the base of the bridge, waiting for transport.

The company, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, will assemble New Glenn rockets in 270- and 330-foot variants at the factory before launching them from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 36 as soon as 2020.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook at @EmreKelly.

When's the next launch?

SpaceX is expected to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A as soon as Nov. 15 on a secretive government mission named "Zuma" for Northrop Grumman. The launch window will open at 8 p.m. and the mission will feature a booster landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

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