NEW ORLEANS — NASA rolled out the main part of the rocket for Artemis III at its New Orleans facility, marking the next step toward putting humans back on the moon.

The rollout happened 10 days after Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific.

WBRZ's Stephen Stock got a look inside the Michoud Assembly Facility, where crews are building the rockets that will go to the moon. Panels on the factory floor will be welded into fuel tanks to hold hydrogen and oxygen that will serve as rocket fuel for missions to the moon and eventually Mars.

"There's a lot of stuff that goes into building a rocket and integrating the pieces together down there in Cape Canaveral," said Terry Prickett, NASA core stage chief engineer.

The core stage is a big piece in the next step toward eventually landing humans on the moon. NASA's goal is to produce a core stage at least once a year, an ambitious timeline considering it used to take the facility four years to produce one rocket like this.

"This is the first time we've rolled out without a complete rocket," said Chris Cianciola, NASA deputy program manager. "We found out it was better and faster, we're trying to get into speed, to do the final outfitting of the rocket in the vertical orientation. The only place we had to do that was at KSC."

The completed rocket core stage is headed to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once there, teams will attach it to solid rocket boosters, engines and the manned space vehicle called Orion.

The mission will send astronauts into Earth orbit where they will meet up with moon landing vehicles.

"It's a great step, as we improve and mature, to get ready for the Artemis IV landing on the moon," said Kent Criswell with NASA human landing systems. "So Artemis III will be a very big step."

The rocket is expected to be completed and ready for launch as early as spring 2027. The barge carrying the core rocket stage is scheduled to take about a week to get to Kennedy Space Center.