#TBT Crews at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center prepared the adapter for testing. The orange cylinder on top of the hardware is the upper load ring. Load lines of hydraulic pressure are put into the ring, which pushes down on the adapter to ensure the hardware won't bend or crack. A test article of the stage adapter that will connect the Orion spacecraft to a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV rocket for its first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1, aced structural loads testing Jan. 30, 2014, allowing it to fly on the Delta IV for the journey to its final exam -- a flight more than 15 times farther into deep space than the International Space Station in December, 2014. For the structural loads test, the hardware was attached with lines running in different directions on the hardware. Hydraulic pressure was added to those lines in increments, which pushed on the adapter to evaluate its integrity. The test was similar to the recent "can-crush" tests on a rocket fuel tank, but the...