Exploration Mission-1: Testing 2 million liters of water

Watch two million liters (450,000 gallons) of water explode 30 meters (100 feet) into the air onto Launch Pad 39B at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. This is the successful October 15, 2018 test of NASA’s Ignition Overpressure Protection and Sound Suppression (IOP/SS) water deluge system.

The water is released across the mobile launcher and flame deflector to dampen the shockwaves and heat of what will be the most powerful rocket in the world: NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Exploration Mission-1, scheduled for 2020.

Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) will be the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, EM-1 will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.

The EM-1 spacecraft “will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon over the course of about a three-week mission.” Learn more with Exploration Mission-1 – Pushing Farther Into Deep Space:

Plus: An Exploration Mission-1 Map.

Follow this with The Chemistry of Rockets: How do rockets work? Plus, more rockets, more NASA, and this fun project: How to make fizzy bottle rockets.