Engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility transfer a 22-foot-tall barrel section of the SLS core stage from the Vertical Weld Center. (Credit: NASA) Boeing is ahead of schedule designing, developing and manufacturing the rocket’s cryogenic stages and avionics, making SLS the largest, most capable rocket, ever. Boeing is working with NASA to renovate the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the Saturn V was built, to accommodate today’s larger rocket. Five of the six large tools are in place and welding hardware. The vertical assembly center, the largest tool that will integrate all the pieces of rocket hardware, will be on line by summer 2014. The ‘brains’ of the rocket, the avionics, are under development at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center’s Software Integration Test Facility. Boeing completed “First Light” in December 2013, achieving the capability to fully test flight-like avionics that will control the rocket in all phases from ground and flight operations. The flight computer has the most powerful processor ever used for a launch vehicle.
Posted on: Sat, 10 May 2014 12:14:47 +0000
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