NASA is busy preparing its ambitious Artemis program that will see the first woman and the next man set foot on the moon by 2024, and which also includes plans for a permanent lunar base and manned trips to Mars.
Preparations include making sure that its high-capacity Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and accompanying Orion spacecraft are safe and reliable for the challenging lunar mission.
In a message posted to Twitter on Thursday, July 2, NASA announced that it has now completed structural testing for the SLS rocket at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
An included video (below) shows a test version of the rocket’s liquid oxygen tank deliberately pushed to its limit, with the procedure culminating, as planned, in the dramatic destruction of the tank.
The sequence shows a replica of the rocket’s hardware, a so-called “structural test item,” installed on a test bench at NASA’s Space Flight Center. For the test, the hydraulic systems pushed and pulled the hardware to simulate the stresses the rocket will experience during launch and ascent. For this particular test, NASA engineers wanted to place a stress level on the rocket that was far more than they expect to see during actual launch to obtain accurate data on its structural limits.
“The engineers at the Marshall test lab worked with the SLS team to test four of the structures that make up most of the rocket’s 212-foot center stage and also the structures that make up the entire top of the rocket,” NASA said in an article accompanying the video. “The final test concludes a nearly three-year series of structural tests that qualified the structural design of these multiple hardware elements for the rocket that will launch NASA’s Artemis missions and astronauts to the moon.”
Orion, the astronaut-carrying spacecraft to be launched on the SLS, recently completed testing the space environment, taking NASA one step closer to reaching its launch target.
NASA aims to take Artemis astronauts to the moon in the next four years, but the project has been dealing with a series of delays and a spiraling budget. Despite the challenges, astronaut Christina Koch, who recently broke the record for the longest continuous stay in space for a woman in 328 days, recently told Digital Trends that NASA can “absolutely” achieve its “bold goal.” of returning humans to the moon by 2024.
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