LOUISVILLE, Colorado – 20 november 2024 – Sierra Space, Inc., a leading commercial aerospace and defense technology company building a platform in space to benefit life on Earth, ® today announced the recent completion of a sixth successful stress test and fourth Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP) test for its LIFE® 10 commercial space station technology. This test of the revolutionary LIFE expandable platform, or Large Integrated Flexible Environment, was the final UBP test Sierra Space was required to perform on LIFE 10 to meet Factor of Safety (FOS) recommendations prior to certifying the structure for human habitation. Download photos and video from the recent testhere.
The LIFE 10 article in this most recent test, conducted on October 29 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, ruptured at the highest pressure to date, 255 psi, and was the highest load to date of any test article in the three-year tie-layer certification test campaign. The 255 psi failure point exceeds every NASA recommended tie-layer capacity guideline in all applications and environments. As a standalone product line, this test proved that the LIFE 10 tie-layer exceeded NASA’s 4x safety factor in both LEO and lunar environments. LIFE 10 has an internal volume comparable to that of a 10-foot moving truck, making it an ideal module for the surface of the moon.
In a LEO environment where the module’s maximum internal pressure is equivalent to Earth’s at 15.2 psi, LIFE 10’s safety factor is greater than 16x. In a lunar environment where – due to various operational needs – the internal pressure is lower (approximately 10.8 psi), LIFE 10’s safety layer has an impressive 23x safety factor. With such high margins, Sierra Space completes the UBP portion of the LIFE 10 test campaign, further solidifying Sierra Space’s position as a leader in commercial space station development.
LIFE 10 is a one-third scale version of the company's LIFE ® 285 habitat, which inflates to the size of a three-story apartment building in orbit. Sierra Space has conducted two UBP tests on LIFE 285-scale modules over the past year; the first will be featured in the NOVA documentary series "Building Stuff," in an episode premiering Nov. 20 on PBS (see previewhere).
“Our company is fully committed to developing the technology necessary to ensure that there is no gap in LEO when the International Space Station is decommissioned,” said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice. “We are leading the industry in developing revolutionary expandable structures that bring to life the world’s first end-to-end business and technology platform in low Earth orbit, enabling humanity to find the answers to some of the toughest problems on Earth.”
“Sierra Space’s scalable LIFE habitat architecture is designed for a broad spectrum of space applications. The LIFE 10 design, which began as a scaled-down version of LIFE 285, is now directly applicable to developing infrastructure on the lunar surface,” said Shawn Buckley, VP, Destinations & In-Space Infrastructure at Sierra Space. “Whether supporting missions in low Earth orbit, deep space, or even on the Moon and Mars, LIFE has so many practical applications. At Sierra Space, we are proud to be at the forefront of inflatable habitat technology and continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in space innovation.”
About Sierra Space
Sierra-ruminte is a leading commercial space company at the forefront of innovation and commercialization of space in the Orbital Age®, building an end-to-end business and technology platform in space to benefit life on Earth. With over 30 years and 500 missions of space heritage, the company is reinventing both space transportation with Dream Hunter®, the world’s only commercial spacecraft, and the future of space destinations with the company’s inflatable and expandable space station technology. Using commercial business models, the company also provides orbital services to commercial, DoD, and national security organizations, and is expanding manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of constellation programs. Additionally, Sierra Space builds a broad range of systems and subsystems in the areas of solar energy, mechanical and motion control, environmental control, life support, propulsion, and thermal control, and offers numerous space-as-a-service solutions for the new space economy.
Source: Sierra Space
