LONDON — Sierra Space has completed a second full-scale burst test of an inflatable module that the company is developing for the Orbital Reef commercial space station and its own efforts.
The company announced July 25 that it conducted the “ultimate burst pressure” test in June at the Marshall Space Flight Center. In the test, the 300-cubic-meter module was pressurized until it burst to test its strength and compliance with safety margins.
The company said the module burst at a pressure of 74 pounds per square inch (psi), well above NASA’s safety requirement of 60.8 psi. That is close to the first ultimate burst pressure test of the module design in December, which reached 77 psi.
“We’ve taken a softgoods system that very few companies around the world have been able to design, and now we have consistent, back-to-back results,” said Shawn Buckley, the Sierra Space vice president leading development of the module, in a statement.
“A second successful full-scale test is an absolute game changer. We now know it’s possible to equal or surpass the total habitable volume of the entire International Space Station, in a single launch,” he added.
The module, which Sierra Space has developed in collaboration with ILC Dover, is one of the contributions Sierra Space is making to Orbital Reef, a commercial station proposed by Sierra Space and Blue Origin. Sierra Space said the test completed a milestone in a NASA award to Blue Origin that is part of the agency’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations program to stimulate development of commercial stations to succeed the ISS.
Sierra Space has also discussed flying the module as a standalone spacecraft as a pathfinder for later stations. The company, which has a unfunded NASA Space Act Agreement to support that effort, said the pathfinder mission is expected to launch “before the end of the decade.”
The 300-cubic-meter module, itself offering one-third the volume of the entire ISS, is a precursor for larger modules. Sierra Space said in the statement it plans to start testing a module with a volume of 500 cubic meters next year.
“Our revolutionary, expandable space station technology reinvents the space station,” argued Tom Vice, chief executive of Sierra Space, in the statement. “Our technology, for the first time, will enable the right unit economics that will usher in the full commercialization of space.”
