NASA has completed a series of wind tunnel tests on the upgraded SpaceX Super Heavy booster that will help launch the Artemis III mission to the moon.
Conducted at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, the tests examined the extreme aerodynamic forces the booster will face during re-entry and built on earlier work at the site in 2024. The booster is part of the Starship launch system SpaceX is developing into the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to carry astronauts between lunar orbit and the surface.
Version 3 of Starship and Super Heavy is expected to form the basis of the lander for the Artemis III demonstration mission, targeted for 2027, with a later crewed lunar landing planned for 2028. NASA is providing facilities such as the Ames wind tunnels and the engineers who ran and analyzed the tests.
Manish Mehta, discipline lead engineer for the HLS Plume and Aero Environments team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said, “We used the agency’s broad experience base of conducting wind tunnel tests for the space shuttle, the SLS rocket, and Orion spacecraft to efficiently set up and analyze the wind tunnel testing for the Super Heavy Version 3.
“Similar testing at the Ames Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel resulted in adding strakes to SLS for Artemis II, so what we learned for Artemis II is helping us get to Artemis III and beyond.”
The strakes are 7.5ft (2.2m) stabilizing fins added to the SLS booster for Artemis II, the program’s first crewed mission, came out of similar testing at Ames. The extensive changes led engineers to seek more data on the steady and unsteady forces the booster meets during re-entry.
Jayanta Panda, unsteady aerodynamics subject matter expert at NASA Ames, said, “When a rocket, or an airplane, flies through air at high speed, it’s subjected to steady aerodynamic forces and moments, and unsteady aerodynamic forces and moments.
“An example of a steady aerodynamic force would be when air smoothly flows over the surface of the rocket as it ascends. An unsteady aerodynamic force would be air buffeting certain areas of the rocket at less predictable times and potentially causing vibrations.”
The team tested a 1.2% scale model of Super Heavy Version 3 in the transonic and supersonic wind tunnels at Ames in late 2025. The transonic tunnel produces speeds from Mach 0.2 to Mach 1.4 – Mach 1 being the speed of sound, about 761mph (1,225km/h) – while the supersonic tunnel runs from Mach 1.55 to Mach 2.5.
Version 3 of the 33-engine booster introduces new propulsion with Raptor 3 engines, three gridfins in place of four – each 50% larger – and an integrated hot stage replacing the previous single-use interstage. It also removes the engine section skirt, individual engine shrouds and the integrated base heat shield.
Data on steady forces will help predict how the booster responds in the atmosphere so its flight software can guide it during re-entry, while the unsteady pressure data feeds software that analyzes structural loads. The work supports NASA’s Artemis program of returning humans to the moon and building toward crewed missions to Mars.
Source: NASA
