Inside the LVSA

Teledyne Brown Engineering, the prime contractor on the project, along with several small business partners, has worked to design and build the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter (LVSA), a highly engineered and weight optimized piece of spaceflight hardware. LVSA provides the fundamental structural strength required to withstand the launch loads and the maximum dynamic pressure (max q). It also provides the critical separation system used to separate the core stage of the rocket from the second stage, which includes the astronauts in the Orion crew vehicle. The cone-shaped adapter is roughly thirty feet in diameter by thirty feet tall and consists of sixteen aluminum-lithium 2195 alloy panels.​