NASA unveils world's Largest welding tool for SLS

The Vertical Assembly Center at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans viewed through a 16mm fisheye lens. Image Credit: NASA N...

The Vertical Assembly Center at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans viewed through a 16mm fisheye lens. Image Credit: NASA

NASA unveiled the largest spacecraft welding tool in the world, the Vertical Assembly Center at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Sept 12.

The VAC will weld the core stage of the Space Launch System, the next generation heavy-lift U.S. rocket being developed for deep space exploration that will launch NASA astronauts to investigate asteroids and eventually to explore the planet Mars.
The 170-foot-tall, 78-foot-wide giant VAC will join domes, rings and barrels to complete the tanks or dry structure assemblies. It also will be used to perform evaluations on the completed welds. Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, including avionics.

The SLS core stage will be more than 61 meters tall and have a diameter of 8.4 meters, storing cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed the rocket's four RS-25 engines.

Engineers recently completed welding all the rings for the first flight of SLS using the Segmented Ring Tool. Ten barrels also have been welded for the SLS core stage using the Vertical Weld Center. The rings connect and provide stiffness between domes and barrels, which will make-up the five major core stage structures: the forward skirt, the liquid oxygen tank, the intertank, the liquid hydrogen tank and the engine section.
The initial Block I version of the human rated SLS will have a payload of 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit(LEO), while Block IB with the Exploration Upper Stage will lift approximately 93.1 to 105 metric tons to the same orbit.