Cranes, towers and more are helping move these massive pieces around.’

A new timelapse shows a moon rocket for astronauts under construction at NASA, ahead of the 2024 launch.

The twin rocket boosters for Artemis 2 will add oomph to NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, which will launch four astronauts on a mission to the moon in 2024. Each Northrop Grumman-made solid rocket booster weighs 1.6 million pounds (720,000 kg), which NASA officials have said is the equivalent mass of four blue whales.

The massive boosters arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) by train in early October, following construction in Utah. Teams at KSC are now focusing on putting together parts of each booster’s aft assembly – that’s the part that steers the boosters as they’re flying during a launch.

“Here, the left and right aft motor segments are mated to the aft skirts, which will be followed by the installation of the aft exit cones,” NASA officials wrote Nov. 3 in a post on X, formerly Twitter.