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Innovation

NASA Marshall readies Test Stand 4697 for extreme SLS tests (video)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Workers have completed the construction of a critical test stand at Marshall Space Flight Center that will be used by NASA engineers to push the limits of the fuel tanks for the Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket ever developed.

Structural Test Stand 4697 is now being outfitted with special equipment and instrumentation. At this stand, the 196,000-gallon cryogenic liquid oxygen taken in the SLS’s giant core stage will be subjected to the extreme stresses of a deep-space mission to Mars.

“The forces the tank will experience in the test stand are as close as you can get on Earth to what the tank will experience on its way to space,” said Scott Chartier, primary test engineer over the stand for Marshall’s propulsion systems test branch.

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