Bolden to visit region

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will be in New Orleans and South Mississippi for two events next week related to NASA's Space Launch System program. He'll be at Michoud Assembly Facility Sept. 12 for a ribbon cutting for the newly finished Vertical Assembly Center, or VAC. The 170-foot-high marvel will be used to join domes, rings and barrels segments to complete the SLS fuel tanks. The tool also will be used to perform evaluations of the completed welds. Towering more than 200 feet tall, with a diameter of 27.6 feet, the core stage is being built by prime contractor Boeing. It will store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed the launch vehicle's RS-25 engines. Bolden will then go to NASA's Stennis Space Center, some 40 miles away in South Mississipp, to talk to the media at the base of the historic B-2 Test Stand. That stand was used to test the S-1C stage on the Saturn V moon rocket and the Main Propulsion Test Article, the configuration of three main engines flown on space shuttle missions. The stand will next be used to test the core stage of SLS and its configuration of four RS-25 engines. SLS will be used by NASA to send humans deeper into space than ever before. (Source: NASA, 09/05/14)