Vibration & Shock
Vibration and shock testing are crucial for designing and testing spaceflight hardware to ensure its resilience against the intense and dynamic conditions of launch and space travel. The Johnson Space Center’s Structures Test Facility can provide structural vibration and shock testing of spaceflight hardware to ensure structural integrity and functionality of spacecraft components to guarantee mission success. Explore the capabilities below, as we invite you to join us in the exciting journey of space exploration at the forefront of discovery.
Structures Test Laboratory – Dynamic
The Structures Test Facility (STL) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) houses a wide range of structural testing capabilities designed to evaluate aerospace components, subsystems, and full-scale structures under flight representative environments. These capabilities support the development, qualification, and certification of spacecraft systems for human spaceflight and other mission-critical applications. These structural test specialties enables the STL to validate critical spaceflight hardware from small-scale components to large integrated systems while ensuring safety, performance, and reliability for crewed and uncrewed missions. Key specialties include:
- Load Testing & Structural Verification – Static and fatigue load testing of components and large structures, including manned spacecraft hardware, to verify strength, stiffness, and design margins.
- Vibration Testing – Random vibration, and sine sweep load testing to simulate launch and ascent environments.
- Fracture Mechanics & Fatigue – Advanced crack growth monitoring, strain gauge instrumentation, and life-cycle fatigue testing of metals, composites, and other aerospace materials.
- Data Acquisition & Analysis – High-fidelity measurement systems with synchronized strain, load, displacement, and acceleration data for detailed structural response evaluation.
Hazardous Vibration & Shock Testing
The Pyrotechnics Test Facility includes the capability to subject hardware to vibration and pyroshock environments encountered during launches and landings.
- The Vibration Shaker System is capable of subjecting components and systems to random and sinusoidal vibration levels up to 26,000 g-lb, over a frequency range of 20 to 2000 Hz. The vibration table is located in a blast-resistant test cell capable of handling hazardous test articles.
- The test facility also houses two Pyroshock Test Stands, the pneumatically-operated Tunable Beam and the explosively-operated Resonant Plate Stand. Both test stands are regularly utilized for subjecting components to shock environments up to 10,000 g, over a frequency range of 100 to 10,000 Hz.
Particle Impact Noise Detection (PIND)
The Receiving, Inspection and Test Facility (RITF) team maintains Particle Impact Noise Detection capabilities, known as PIND or PIN-D. PIND or PIN-D, is performed to detect loose particles inside a device cavity which could ultimately prevent a failure during a mission.
PIND is a nondestructive test to identify any devices that may have particles such as solder balls that could become dislodged during vibrational loads and cause an internal short.
- Load up to 1 lb.
- Frequency Range: 40Hz to 130Hz
- Vibration Range: 10g to 20g
Related Software
In a lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, engineers simulate conditions that astronauts in space suits would experience when the Orion spacecraft is vibrating during launch atop the agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket on its way to deep space destinations on Jan. 19, 2017. A series of tests occurring this month at Johnson will help human factors engineers assess how well the crew can interact with the displays and controls they will use to monitor Orion’s systems and operate the spacecraft when necessary…Test subjects wore modified advanced crew escape suits that are being developed for astronauts in Orion, and sat in the latest design of the seat atop the crew impact attenuation system. This was the first time this key hardware was brought together to evaluate how launch vibrations may impact the astronaut’s ability to view the displays and controls.
A preflight view of the Space Test Program-Houston 9-Neutron Radiation Detection Instrument (STP-H9-NeRDI) during vibration testing. Image courtesy of U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
An Orbital Maneuvering System engine is vibration tested at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on June 16, 2016, before shipment to the agency’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, where it will be fired to qualify the engine for use on Orion’s service module. The vibration testing will help ensure the engine can withstand the loads induced by launch on the agency’s Space Launch System rocket. This summer, another Orbital Maneuvering System engine will be tested at Johnson before it is supplied to ESA (European Space Agency) to integrate into Orion’s service module, which will power, propel and cool Orion in space, and also provide consumables like air and water for future crews. ..ESA and its contractor Airbus Defence and Space are providing the service module for Artemis I. This Orbital Maneuvering System engine was used on the space shuttle to provide the thrust for orbital insertion, orbit circularization, orbit transfer, rendezvous, deorbit and abort situations and flew on 31 shuttle flights. The engine flying on Artemis I flew on 19 space shuttle flights, beginning with STS-41G in October 1984 and ending with STS-112 in October 2002.
The Johnson Pyrotechnics test facility houses two Pyroshock Test Stands, the pneumatically-operated Tunable Beam is shown.
