Aug 23 2007
From The Space Library
NASA announced that its SSC in Mississippi had broken ground for the construction of a new rocket-engine test stand, which would provide altitude testing for the J-2X engine. The J-2X would power the upper stages of the Ares-I and Ares-V rockets. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana L. Dale spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new test stand, recalling that the first stand erected at NASA’s SSC had tested the Saturn-5 rocket for the Apollo program. NASA had first tested the Space Shuttle engines at SSC in the 1970s. The new test stand for the new spacecraft signaled the beginning of a new era of exploration. The 19-acre site in SSC’s A Complex would contain the 300-foot-tall (91-meter-tall), open-steel-frame A-3 test stand; a testcontrol center; propellant-barge docks; and access roadways. Engineers would generate steam to reduce pressure in the test cell, using the test stand to simulate conditions at different altitudes.
NASA, “NASA’s Stennis Space Center Marks New Chapter in Space Exploration,” news release 07-180, 23 August 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/aug/HQ_07180_Stennis_groundbreaking.html (accessed 14 June 2010).
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