Early production continues on advanced upper stage for NASA moon rocket

Technicians at NASA’s Michoud Meeting Facility in New Orleans have accomplished a serious portion of a weld confidence article for the superior higher stage of NASA’s SLS (Area Launch System) rocket. The {hardware} was rotated to a horizontal place and moved to a different a part of the power Oct. 24.

The weld confidence article varieties a part of the liquid oxygen tank for the SLS rocket’s exploration upper stage and is the fifth of seven weld confidence articles engineers are manufacturing for the developed SLS Block 1B configuration of the SLS rocket. Starting with Artemis IV, SLS will evolve to its extra highly effective Block 1B configuration with the superior higher stage that provides the rocket the potential to launch 40% extra to the moon together with Artemis astronauts inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

Groups use weld confidence articles to confirm welding procedures, interfaces between the tooling and hardware, and structural integrity of the welds. The dome of the liquid oxygen tank weld confidence article was first welded to its structural ring at NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle in Huntsville, Alabama, utilizing friction stir welding tooling. The {hardware} was transported to Michoud, the place Michoud crews within the Liquid Oxygen Tank Meeting Middle (LTAC) completed welding the {hardware}. Marshall and Michoud engineers concurrently performed testing and evaluation on the {hardware} to validate welding parameters.

In tandem, NASA and Boeing, the SLS lead contractor for the core stage and exploration higher stage, are producing structural check articles and flight {hardware} buildings for the higher stage at Marshall and Michoud.