We have successfully completed our sixth stress test and fourth Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP) test for our LIFE® 10 commercial space station technology, achieving a rupture at 255 psi, the highest pressure yet. This test exceeded NASA’s Factor of Safety recommendations, demonstrating a safety factor greater than 16x in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and 23x in lunar environments. Our team continues to lead in the development of expandable structures for various space applications, as we build the world’s first commercial space station.
We’re developing advanced inflatable softgoods technologies to support astronauts living and working in space. These durable, spacious and safe modules are designed for a variety of mission needs. Built entirely by our expert team, our inflatable habitats offer adaptability, repeatability and cost-effective manufacturing—paving the way for the future of space habitation.
This year, the ozone hole over Antarctica reached its annual maximum extent on September 28th, 2024, with an area of 8.5 million square miles (22.4 square million kilometers). The hole, which is actually a region of depleted ozone, was the 20th smallest since scientists began recording the ozone hole in 1979. The average size of the ozone hole between September and October this year was the 7th-smallest since the Montreal Protocol began to take effect.
Travel along a steep slope up to the rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater in this panoramic image captured by NASA’s Perseverance just days before the rover reached the top. The scene shows just how steep some of the slopes leading to the crater rim can be.
The rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to capture this view on Dec. 5, 2024, the 1,349th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. At the time, the rover was about 1,150 feet (350 meters) from, and 250 feet (75 meters) below, the top of the crater rim – a location the science team calls “Lookout Hill.” The rover reached Lookout Hill on Dec. 10 after a climb of 3½ months and 1,640 vertical feet (500 vertical meters).
The Space Launch System core stage, or simply core stage, is the main stage of the American Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, built by The Boeing Company in the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility. At 65 m (212 ft) tall and 8.4 m (27.6 ft) in diameter, the core stage contains approximately 987 t (2,177,000 lb) of its liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen cryogenic propellants. Propelled by 4 RS-25 engines, the stage generates approximately 7.44 MN (1,670,000 lbf) of thrust, about 25% of the Space Launch System’s thrust at liftoff, for approximately 500 seconds, propelling the stage alone for the last 375 seconds of flight. The stage lifts the rocket to an altitude of approximately 162 km (531,380 ft) before separating, reentering the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
The core stage originated in 2011, when the architecture of the Space Launch System as a whole was defined. In the aftermath of the end of the Space Shuttle program and the cancellation of its prospective replacement the Constellation program, the SLS emerged, a super-heavy lift launch vehicle intended for human spaceflight to the Moon. The core stage is the first newly-developed stage of the SLS; the ICPS (Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) and five-segment boosters are adaptations of existing hardware, to be replaced by the Exploration Upper Stage and BOLE boosters respectively.
Production of core stages began by 2014, but was beset by numerous difficulties in production and testing which delayed the readiness of the first core stage by several years. The core stage first flew on November 16, 2022, on the Artemis 1 mission, in which it performed successfully. As of 2024, the second core stage is completed, with the third and fourth core stages in production and while work has begun for the fifth and sixth, their production pending the transfer of SLS operations to Deep Space Transport, the vehicle’s future operator.
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