Commercial Rockets Bring New Life to Stennis
Sixty years since its first test firings began, NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi is welcoming new users to its facilities. Commercial rockets built by Blue Origin and Relativity Space are now taking to the stands, breathing new life into a site first built to support NASA’s journey to the Moon. These partners join a growing list of users alongside continued NASA testing at Stennis, as the agency works to return to the Moon under the Artemis Program.
Blue Origin is the latest arrival at Stennis, where it will hotfire the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket, called GS2, using NASA’s B-2 test stand. Per an agreement announced in July, NASA will provide personnel, labor, and equipment in addition to the test facilities themselves. A key part of NASA’s Artemis Program, New Glenn will join the Saturn V and Space Launch System among the ranks of Moon rockets tested at Stennis.
In a September 9th post on X (formerly Twitter), Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp shared that the first GS2 to be fired at Stennis was preparing to ship to Stennis aboard NASA’s Pegasus barge. Blue Origin has previously tested GS2s at its LC-36 launch site in Florida, but that pad is currently being rebuilt after an explosion earlier this year. In a press release, the company noted the new site will help keep the pad clear for launch operations.
Relativity Space has also brought upper stages to Stennis this year, supporting the development of its Terran R rocket. Relativity signed an agreement with NASA in 2023 to reactivate the dormant A-2 test stand, which had not seen use since 2014 for the defunct J-2X engine program. The company plans to test both stages of Terran R atop the A-2 stand.
Relativity began testing in early August of this year, sharing on X that it had completed cryogenic proof testing of Terran’s upper stage ahead of later hotfire testing. Though Terran R is not currently participating in the Artemis program, the rocket was awarded a NASA Launch Services II contract in September, allowing the agency to procure Terran launches for future missions.
These partnerships will not be the first commercial users at Stennis; the site’s smaller E-1, E-2, and E-3 facilities have supported many rocket engines in the past, including Blue Origin’s BE-4 and SpaceX’s Raptor. What is new is the arrival of full, flightlike rocket stages, which most stands have not seen since the Apollo era. NASA has recently conducted renovations and upgrades to support the coming work, including modifications to the water feed from its 66-million-gallon reservoir in May of this year.
Stennis Space Center began construction in 1961 to support testing of the Saturn V Moon rocket. The Fred Haise (formerly A-1) and A-2 stands were built to carry the rocket’s S-II upper stage, while the B-1 and B-2 stands supported the massive S-IC first stage. Twenty-seven Saturn V stages were fired before the program’s end. From 1975 onward, the A and B stands were used to test Space Shuttle Main Engines; the B-2 stand also tested an integrated propulsion module with three engines attached to an External Tank. In all, more than two thousand tests were conducted through 2009, at the twilight of the Shuttle program.
Since the end of the Shuttle program, Stennis’ use has been more sparing. The smaller E facilities were each built to supplement developmental testing, while the A-3 stand was built to test the J-2X engine for the cancelled Constellation program. NASA continues to test RS-25 engines for the Artemis program, and the B-2 stand previously supported a “Green Run” hot fire of a complete Space Launch System core stage ahead of Artemis I, from 2020–2021. A similar Green Run test was planned for the now-cancelled Exploration Upper Stage.
