IT TAKES a lot of wiring to control the most powerful rocket ever built. The rocket in question, the Space Launch System (SLS), is designed to help send robots – and maybe one day people – to Mars and beyond (for more on the changing road map, see “Team moon vs team Mars: the battle over the future of NASA”). But it will need more than brawn – it needs brains, too, and much testing.
Here, at the Integrated Avionics Test Facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, engineers have created a mock-up of the full on-board suite of sensors, controllers and software systems that will manage the rocket. This allows them to simulate thousands of launch and flight scenarios by adjusting variables such as the rocket’s trajectory, weather conditions and even the sloshing of liquid propellant – all without ever leaving the ground.
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Everything is assembled on a rack in a configuration identical to the inside of the SLS, right down to the length of the connecting cables and the curvature of the core stage. Although this particular set-up will never fly – it is purely a test system – an identical suite will be installed in the rocket itself prior to its first launch, due in December next year.
Photographer Vincent Fournier gained special access to five sites involved in NASA’s SLS development. The resulting images, part of his ongoing Space Project, were exhibited recently at Photo Basel in Switzerland. They can also be seen by contacting the Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Photographer
Vincent Fournier,
This article appeared in print under the headline “Rocket simulator”
