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Marshall's Shuttle Power
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is responsible for the most critical components for America’s workhorse Space Shuttle. The Marshall Center provides the propulsion system for every flight of the Shuttle.The Space Shuttle main propulsion system three major elements:
- two solid rocket boosters that combine to produce 5.3 million pounds of thrust for the boost from the launch pad for the first two minutes
- three main engines that generate a total thrust of more than one million pounds and provide power for the eight-and-one-half minutes of launch
- the external fuel tank that holds over one-half million gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen that fuel the main engines
As NASA’s center of excellence for space propulsion, Marshall employs some of the nation’s finest and brightest engineers to support its renowned propulsion program.
NASA's Human SpaceFlight, Space Shuttle | Marshall Space Flight Center, Space Shuttle Project