STENNIS SPACE CENTER NAVIGATION LOCK–MITER GATE REHABILITATION
Hancock County, Mississippi
The Stennis Space Center (SSC) is NASA’s largest rocket testing facility. It is located in Hancock County, Mississippi, on the banks of the Pearl River at the Mississippi-Louisiana border. The facility requires barge access, as the rockets to be tested are too large for overland transport. Barge access to the site is through the SSC Canal Navigation Lock, which has been in service since 1965.
NASA awarded Massman Construction Co. the contract to rehabilitate the lock miter gates at Stennis Space Center. To facilitate the rehab project, SSC closed the lock to navigation beginning in November 2022. Reopening the lock on schedule was critical for NASA to meet its schedule for testing rocket engines for its Artemis II mission.
Rehabilitation of both upper and lower miter gates required each miter gate leaf to be hoisted out and laid flat on a deck barge for rehabilitation. Before removing the miter gates, Massman Construction Co. retrieved stop-logs stored at the Demopolis Lock and Dam on the Tombigbee River, transported the stop-logs by barge to SSC and installed the stop-logs at the upper end of the lock.
Massman Construction Co. crews installed two lifting lugs in each leaf to remove the gates and prepped deck barges with gate stands. Massman’s Manitowoc 4100 Ringer crane extracted the gates. Lower gate leafs weighed 140 tons each, and upper gate leafs 75 tons each. The gates were towed to Massman’s fabrication contractor’s facility in New Orleans for rehabilitation.
The miter gate rehabilitation work consisted of blasting and painting the gates, replacing all timber fenders, replacing rubber seals, and repairing structural steel members. The inspection of the gates at the fabrication facility revealed their deterioration was more severe than expected, and the scope of the rehabilitation work grew significantly. However, the restoration was still completed within the critical timeframe NASA required to meet the test schedule for the Artemis II rocket engines. The lock was reopened in August 2023, well before NASA resumed using the lock to receive barges.
