Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The J-2X, NASA's new upper stage rocket engine!


This week we are at the Stennis Space Center documenting the 3rd test of the J-2X engine. It is NASA's new upper stage engine, designed to lift a space craft to orbit and also to be able to restart after shutdown while in orbit. It is based on the Apollo era J-2 engine that powered the Saturn V second and third stages. Some of the changes include the removal of beryllium, a redesign of all the electronics, and the use of 21st-century joining techniques.

Here is a short video that explains a little more about what the J-2X is and what lead up to us being here this week...


Today was the big day.  We came here with a regular high definition camera, a Panasonic DVC-ProHD camera with a wide angle lens and also with a new Red Mysterium-X. It's the first time we at Marshall Television have used it and I was a little nervous. It's more like a film camera than a video camera and it requires a bit more work to achieve a nicely exposed image. It's definitely not for a beginner!

After a couple hours of waiting and sweating we were awarded with the awesome engine test!


This was a 7 second test of this brand new engine.  After a few more longer tests, there will be a full duration, 500 second test!  That should be awesome!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is what I like very much

stop ringing in ears