The test is a crucial step in NASA ‘s Artemis program to launch the first and next female on the Moon in 2024.
NASA rejected the four engines of the deep-space exploration rocket – the Space Launch System (SLS) – for the first time on Saturday, but the “hot fire” test ended much earlier than expected.
Set up in a test facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the SL2’s 212-foot (65-meter) high platform went live to 4:27 p.m. (22:27 GMT) for just over a minute – very short of the four minutes engineers had to stay on track for the first launch of a mega rocket in November this year.
When the test was broadcast live, NASA did not explain the reason for the early shutdown, but Wayne Hale, a former manager of NASA’s space shuttle program, suggested “a major component failure”.
Well it was not MCF that this ascent flight director ever wanted to hear: A major failure is being detected by the SSME controller.
– Wayne Hale (@waynehale) January 16, 2021
Totally agree. Very valuable. Now the conversations will begin as to whether enough data has been collected or whether the test needs to be re-run – in every way that engine will be changed out. Of course the experts may tell us at the upcoming post-test conference https://t.co/523kXgoVl5
– Wayne Hale (@waynehale) January 16, 2021
The firefight, the final part of NASA’s nearly-year “Green Run” test mission, was a crucial step for the space agency and its main SLS contractor, Boeing, before the first rocket was launched in the spacecraft. November.
The success of the unmanned mission, known as “Artemis 1”, will set the stage for the first time on the Moon by humans from the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The President of the USA Donald Trump has pushed for that trip – which will also see the first female on the Moon – to take place by 2024.
It was unclear whether Boeing and NASA would have to repeat Saturday ‘s test, a preview that the first release could launch until 2022.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, speaking at a post-experimental press conference, said the group had received “a lot of data that we are going to sort” to determine if next testing is necessary. -news.
NASA’s SLS program manager John Honeycutt warned that the analysis of data from the test is ongoing and told reporters that the turnaround time for another hot fire test could be around one month.
The SLS super-lift heavy lift can last three years on schedule and nearly $ 3bn over budget.
Critics have long argued that NASA will discontinue core rocket-time technologies, which have launch costs of $ 1bn or more per mission, in favor of newer commercial options that are promising lower costs.
In comparison, it costs as little as $ 90m to fly the huge but less powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, designed and manufactured by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and some $ 350m each launch for Delta IV Heavy, the legacy of United Launch Alliance.
While newer, more reusable rockets from both companies – SpaceX’s Starship and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan – promise heavier lift capacity than the Falcon Heavy or Delta IV Heavy, which may be at a lower cost , supporters of SLS have argued that it would give two or more publications on those. launch rockets for what the SLS could carry in a single mission.
Reuters reported in October that President Joe Biden’s space advisers were aiming to delay Trump’s 2024 target, throwing new doubts about the long-term events of SLS just as SpaceX and Jeff Originz ‘Blue Origin scrambles to bring new heavy construction capacity to market.
NASA and Boeing engineers have stayed on a 10-month record for the Green Run “despite being tough this year,” Boeing SLS manager John Shannon told reporters this week, announces five tropical storms and hurricanes that hit Stennis, as well as its closure three months after some engineers tested positive for the coronavirus in March.