June 25, 2008
For more than four decades, NASA John C. Stennis Space Center, located in south Mississippi, has served as NASA’s rocket propulsion testing ground. Today, the center provides propulsion test services for NASA and for the Department of Defense, as well as the private sector.
The unique waterway system and 125,000-acre acoustical buffer zone that surrounds SSC are considered national assets, and enable testing of large-scale rocket engines and components. SSC was initially established as a national testing center to flight-certify all first and second stages of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo manned lunar landing program. Since 1975, the center’s primary mission has been to test the main engines that propel the space shuttle during its 8 ½-minute ascent to orbit.
In 2010, the Space Shuttle Program will end and a new fleet of launch vehicles will power America’s next-generation spacecraft, Orion, which will carry astronauts back to the moon with eventual journeys to Mars. SSC is testing core components for the J-2X rocket engine that will power the upper stage of the new crew launch vehicle, Ares I, and the Earth departure stage of Ares V, the new cargo launch vehicle. The J-2X engine is derived from Apollo’s Saturn V rockets that were tested at Stennis 40 years ago.NASA has chosen the RS-68 engine to power the core stage of the Ares V, intended to carry large payloads to the moon. The prime contractor for the RS-68 engine is Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif. All RS-68 engines are assembled and test-fired at SSC. SSC hosts the rocket propulsion test program, managing the propulsion test facilities at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the White Sands Center’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio, as well as the
test facilities at Stennis.
SSC’s state-of-the-art test facilities include the A, B and E complexes, designed for rocket propulsion testing from component to engine to stage-level. The A-3 Test Stand currently under construction at Stennis will be used to prove the J-2X engines. SSC’s versatile, three-stand E Test Complex with its seven separate test cells serves as a component test facility for future-generation rocket engines.
SSC’s rocket engine test stands provide test operations for the development and certification of
propulsion systems, engines, subsytems and components.
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration
John C. Stennis Space Center
Stennis Space Center, MS 39529-6000
(228) 688-3333
NASA Facts
