A key constituent of the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) architecture is the RS-25 engine, also known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). This engine was selected largely due to the maturity and extensive experience gained through 30-plus years of service. However, while the RS-25 is a highly mature system, simply unbolting it from the Space Shuttle and mounting it on the new SLS vehicle is not a "plug-and-play" operation. In addition to numerous technical integration and operational details, there were also hardware upgrades needed. While the magnitude of effort is less than that needed to develop a new clean-sheet engine system, this paper describes some of the expected and unexpected challenges encountered to date on the path to the first flight of SLS.


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    Title :

    SSME to RS-25: Challenges of Adapting a Heritage Engine to a New Vehicle Architecture


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    European Conference for Aeronautics and Space Sciences ; 2015 ; Krakow, Poland


    Publication date :

    2015-06-29


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English