The long run museum display of NASA’s retired space shuttle Endeavour took an enormous step upwards on Tuesday (Nov. 7), as cranes lifted the primary of two solid rocket motors into the vertical on the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
The stacking procedure — standing the booster atop its previously placed aft skirt inside the development site for the science center’s latest Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center — was the primary major lift in a three-part series that can result on the planet’s only vertical exhibit of an authentic space shuttle. Tuesday’s lift of the solid rocket motor (SRM) was each paying homage to something NASA has done greater than 140 times before and, at the identical time, a primary in history.
Take for instance, the pair of solid rocket boosters that NASA is now starting to stack for its Artemis 2 mission, the primary launch to send humans to the moon in greater than 50 years. That lift has many complexities, but it surely is being done throughout the partitions of the Vehicle Assembly Constructing (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, identical to every other pair of boosters to fly.
On the California Science Center, the solid rocket motors — the most important component of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) — are being lifted within the open air.
“Being indoors takes out that wildcard of being outside and being on the mercy of the weather,” Lance Christopherson, senior program manager for booster assembly and integration at Northrop Grumman, NASA’s SRB contractor, said in an interview with collectSPACE.com.
From the bottom up
Fortunately, the weather cooperated and after two hours of preparation, it look the crane operators on the California Science Center about 10 minutes to lift the primary solid rocket motor from its cradle lying horizontal on the road to hanging vertical, still supported by the crane. The team then rested the aft end of the 116-foot-long (35-meter) SRM on a brief base to attend for its lift up and over into the Air and Space Center worksite.
In Florida, the work to accumulate the Artemis 2 SRBs began on Oct. 10 in Kennedy’s Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF).
“They took our aft motor segments and mated them to the aft skirts, installed the exit cones after which put the core stage attach ring on with the aft attach struts,” said Christopherson. “When the work is finished within the RPSF, we are going to then transfer the aft assemblies to the VAB where they can be placed on the mobile launcher and that may be considered the beginning of the stack.”
That transfer and lift is currently targeted for the tip of February. After that, three center SRM segments for every booster can be rotated into the vertical within the RPSF after which brought over to the VAB to be lifted into the high bay and placed atop the aft assemblies.
On the California Science Center, the SRM segments were mated together as a single tower before being hoisted atop their respective aft skirts. Tuesday’s lift and lowering of the port or left side SRM took about an hour to finish. But identical to at Kennedy, the aft skirt and the SRM did not only snap together.
“There are 177 one-inch-long (2.54 centimeters) pins that must be put in,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center.
The identical, but different
Each sets of boosters in Florida and California were assembled by Northrop Grumman from pieces that flew with the space shuttle before. The SRBs that can stand with Endeavour include components that flew with the identical orbiter on 16 of its 25 missions. The Artemis 2 boosters are made up of parts that launched on 12 of Endeavour’s flights, including its first (STS-49) and last (STS-134) missions.
There are differences between the 2 stacks, though. To start, the SRMs at Kennedy aren’t empty. Each is crammed with solid rocket fuel, the propellant that can provide 75 percent of the overall thrust for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at lift off. As such, each SRM for Artemis 2 weighs about 855,000 kilos (340,000 kilograms), excluding the lower segment attached to the aft skirt.
The booster segments lifted on Tuesday in Los Angeles weighed just 104,000 kilos (47,000 kg).
Should every part go to plan, the California Science Center expects to have each SRMs lifted and in place by as early as Wednesday afternoon. Within the VAB, it would take greater than a few days.
“We will typically do about two joints per week and we have now eight joints. So it’s about two to 2 and a half months for that to occur,” Christopherson said.
In Florida and California, the SRMs can be followed by the forward assemblies, or nose cones, to finish the solid rocket boosters. The science center expects that to happen in early December, after they will erect scaffolding to take the place of the work platforms within the VAB.
At Kennedy Space Center, after the SRBs will come the core stage of the SLS after which the Orion spacecraft with its European service module and launch escape system tower. Artemis 2 is targeted to launch no sooner than late 2024 with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on board.
The California Science Center will lift and mate NASA’s last remaining built-for-flight external tank, ET-94, with the standing solid rocket boosters in early 2024 after which do the identical with Endeavour. Construction work will then proceed on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, enclosing the space shuttle inside.
The space shuttle Endeavour exhibit is predicted to open in the following few years.