Shutdown or no shutdown, some critical federal government work is still going on. A big example for NASA is now secure in a test stand at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The test version of the Liquid Hydrogen Tank that will fuel NASA’s deep space rocket the Space Launch System is now ready for stress testing at Marshall. The tank was brought upriver from NASA’s New Orleans manufacturing center to Huntsville and unloaded by crews also certified as essential and exempt from the shutdown. It was installed Monday in the test stand specifically built for this purpose.
The tank will hold 537,000 gallons of supercooled liquid hydrogen at liftoff, and the stress tests are designed to subject it to the same conditions it will endure then. An identical tank will be part of the actual rocket.
The Space Launch System is officially scheduled to launch in December, but that date is widely expected to slide into 2020.
Marshall is NASA’s propulsion center and home to numerous large test facilities for rocket parts. The test stand now putting the SLS tank through its paces will also test a larger tank for an expanded later version of the rocket.