So a lot of activity across the portfolio, across the four centers for NASA. And I can say that for fiscal year ’23, we were much busier with a lot of our commercial partners and actually tested over 700 times with more than 50,000 seconds of hot fire testing alone. So, on average across the entire portfolio, we typically conduct over 500 tests per year. Our responsibility is providing test services to provide data for our customers to help validate their initial design concepts as well as to increase confidence in their performance and their manufacturing and operations to help ensure successful launch readiness, not just for NASA programs like Artemis, but for a variety of customers within NASA and outside of NASA such as the DOD and our commercial partners. And we do have facilities at the Glenn Research Center in Ohio as well as the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, here at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi as well as the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. And these capabilities are the test stands themselves and the infrastructure but also the people and the skills and everyone on the team that’s responsible for maintaining and operating these systems. Now the physical program office is located at Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi, but I report up through the Space Operations Mission Directorate organizationally at Headquarters, and we’re responsible for managing the budget, the risk, the strategic planning, and the sustainment of NASA’s chemical rocket propulsion test capabilities across four of NASA’s centers. So the Rocket Propulsion Test Program is what is known as a capability portfolio. Host: Could you start by describing the Rocket Propulsion Test Program? Powell: Oh, thank you so much for having me. The program office resides at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, and Christine Powell is the program manager.Ĭhristine, thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. The program provides integration for NASA and its customers to obtain safe, efficient, and cost-effective chemical rocket propulsion test services. The Rocket Propulsion Test Program establishes and maintains world-class test facilities. And so, we utilize our unique test facilities across the nation to help in that process.ĭeana Nunley (Host): Welcome to Small Steps, Giant Leaps, a NASA APPEL Knowledge Services podcast where we tap into project experiences to share best practices, lessons learned, and novel ideas. Whether the payload is a robotic element or a science payload or a satellite to release or a crewed mission, the propulsion systems used to launch have to be safe and reliable. Christine Powell: Developing and testing rocket propulsion systems, it’s really foundational to spaceflight and to everything that we’re trying to do with spaceflight.
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