NASA Drains 66-Million-Gallon Reservoir to Upgrade Critical Water System

Key points

• A powerful but mostly unseen water system at work during rocket engine tests at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, underwent an upgrade in May.
• Crews brought the High Pressure Industrial Water Facility’s 66-million-gallon reservoir to its lowest level since construction in the 1960s by pumping out about 40 million gallons of water over three days.
• This brought the reservoir, measuring 800 feet in diameter and about 25 feet deep, down to the level needed to replace a 3,000 gallon per minute pump that supplies water for fire suppression to the test complexes.
• before after The High Pressure Industrial Water Facility’s 66-million-gallon reservoir is shown at NASA’s Stennis Space Center on May 7 as work gets underway to remove about 40 million gallons of water to complete upgrades.
• NASA/Danny Nowlin The reservoir is shown at NASA’s Stennis Space Center on May 11 at its lowest level since...