Work continues on NASA’s Pegasus barge, which is undergoing refurbishments at Conrad Shipyard LLC in Morgan City, Louisiana. Conrad crews recently built and replaced the vessel’s 115-foot center section with a new, 165-foot center section. The team also is finishing the final welds, surface preparation and painting for the barge. The modifications brought the total length of the barge from 260 feet to 310 feet — a little more than the length of a football field. The barge modification work, acceptance testing and delivery are scheduled for completion in March 2015. Pegasus will carry the core stage of NASA’s Space Launch System. The SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions, including to an asteroid and ultimately Mars.
Once the modifications are complete, the Pegasus will be temporarily stationed at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, for operational readiness and maintenance until the barge is needed for core stage shipments. The barge will then be stationed at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility outside of New Orleans, where the core stage components will be built.
Pegasus will travel to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to deliver the core stage structural test articles for testing to ensure that these huge structures can withstand the incredible stresses of launch.
Image credit: NASA/Steven Seipel