PRESS REVUE : STAINLESS STEEL WORLD NEWS PRODUCTION - Aerospace Supplement -
Edition July/August 2006
Spacecraft depend on orbital welding
(by Dick Herzfeld / Polysoude)

Producing welds for satellites and launch vehicle propulsion systems that are able to withstand the rigors of deep space is a task accorded to orbital welding. With every component manufactured for the NASA Space Program, the weld joints must meet the highest quality certification standards. This means that every weld must pass the stringent purity and integrity tests.

For many years, automated welding has been the tool of choice for aerospace companies manufacturing launch vehicles - e.g. Atlas, Titan, and other rockets - or which fabricate spacecraft for NASA and Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL), that are designed for critical, deep-space missions, like the Cassini mission to Saturn and the Genesis mission to collect particles of solar wind.

How orbital welding is used
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