Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company and defense-tech prime that is Building a Platform in Space to Benefit Life on Earth®, has officially announced a sixth successful stress test, and the fourth Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP) test, for its LIFE® 10 commercial space station technology.
According to certain reports, this happened to be the final UBP test that Sierra Space was required to perform on LIFE 10, if it was to fulfill Factor of Safety (FOS) recommendations ahead of certifying the structure for human habitation.
More on the given test would reveal how it was conducted NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where it would go on to rupture the highest pressure yet of 255 psi. Not just that, it also happened to be the highest loading to date of any test article in the three-year restraint layer certification test campaign.
Staying with the 255 psi failure point, it markedly exceeded any guideline for restraint layer capability recommended by NASA in all applications and environments. Furthermore, as a standalone product line, this test effectively proved that the LIFE 10 restraint layer surpassed NASA’s 4x factor of safety recommendation in both LEO and lunar environments.
Among other things, we ought to mention how LIFE 10 has an internal volume similar to that of a 10-ft-long moving truck. This makes it an ideal module for the surface of the moon.
“Our company is fully committed to developing the necessary technology to ensure there is no gap in LEO when the International Space Station is decommissioned,” said, Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space. “We are leading the industry in the development of revolutionary expandable structures that will 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 faced on Earth.”
Talk about how this technology looked in both LEO and lunar environment, we begin from the former,where the maximum internal pressure of the module will resemble that of Earth at 15.2 psi. In this particular environment, the LIFE 10’s factor of safety was greater than 16x.
As for the lunar environment, the internal pressure here happens to be lower (around 10.8 psi), and therefore, LIFE 10’s restraint layer would display an impressive 23x factor of safety. Another detail worth a mention here is how LIFE 10 is a one-third scale version of the company’s LIFE® 285 habitat.
All in all, the company has conducted, so far, two UBP tests on LIFE 285-scale modules in the past year, with the first one now set to be featured in the NOVA documentary series called “Building Stuff,” premiering November 20th on PBS.
Founded in 2021, Sierra Space’s rise up the ranks stems from providing orbital services to commercial, DoD and national security organizations, The company’s hosts, at the moment, a host of systems and subsystems across solar power, mechanics and motion control, environmental control, life support, propulsion and thermal control to basically offer various space-as-a-service solutions for the new space economy.
“Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat scalable architecture is designed for a broad spectrum of space applications. The LIFE 10 design which started out as a scaled version of the LIFE 285, is now directly applicable for lunar surface infrastructure development,” said Shawn Buckley, VP, Destinations & In-Space infrastructure at Sierra Space. “Whether it’s supporting missions in Low Earth Orbit, deep space, or even on the moon and on Mars, LIFE has so many practical applications. At Sierra Space, we’re proud to lead the way in inflatable habitat technology and continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space innovation.”
