External Tank

Delivered to NASA in 1977, this was the first external tank ever built for the shuttle program. It was used in the Space Shuttle Main Engine test program at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for more than ten years, providing fuel for twelve test firings of the Shuttle’s Main Propulsion System with a total test time of 3,810 seconds, equivalent to about eight flights. In 1988, it traveled 1,250 miles by barge over the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers to NASA’s Marshall Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The external tank fuels the orbiter’s main engines during the first eight and a half minutes of flight with 550,000 gallons of liquid propellant; when the shuttle nears orbital velocity at just over 70 miles above Earth, the tank is jettisoned and tumbles back to Earth. It is the only major part of the Space Transportation System that is not reused. The tank is 153.8 feet long, 27.6 feet in diameter, has a gross lift-off weight of 1,655,000 pounds, and carries 1,361,000 pounds of liquid oxygen and 227,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen. Its prime contractor was Martin Marietta Manned Space Systems.

Huntsville, Alabama · United States