NASA prepares for massive test firing of Saturn V’s largest rocket.

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January 15 (UPI) – NASA plans to unleash one of the largest and most powerful rockets ever built, the heart rate of the Space Launch System, for an eight-minute firing test Saturday.

The lunar rocket launch is planned for 5pm EST at the Stennis Space Center in rural Mississippi. Large clouds of steam are expected as the test center is cooled by more than 300,000 gallons of water per minute to prevent equipment from overheating.

“The [rocket] powered by more than 1,400 sensors … that will bring a lot of valuable data at the end of our hot fire, “Julie Bassler, NASA ‘s project manager for the rocket system, said at an earlier press conference in the per week.

The sensors will tell NASA and Boeing, which raised the main stage, how the rocket performed with weights and temperature readings, among other data, Bassler said.

The test consumes more than 700,000 gallons of supercooled combustion engine – dissolved nitrogen and dissolved oxygen, she said.

NASA plans to upgrade the main stage and send it to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in February, where the space agency plans to launch an unmanned mission around the moon by November.

The platform’s four engines fire with a total thrust of about 1.6 million pounds, compared to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with a total shuttle of 3.4 million pounds at construction.

The basic level test will not include two hard rocket lifts that will be used for missions. Once these are added, the SLS rocket would have about 8.8 million pounds of space – 15 percent more power than the Saturn V rocket that brought astronauts to the moon during the Apollo era.

“There’s a lot of power, but that’s exactly what the test stand is built to do, as it did back in the Saturn days,” Ryan McKibben, NASA’s Green Run test director, said at the time of the co. press conference.

Around 300 people from Boeing and NASA were expected to work at Stennis through the pilot program.

“This is not a development or test article. It’s the flying article that will power Artemis One around the moon, so we’re very careful with how we go about it,” said John Shannon, west Boeing president and SLS program manager.

Artemis ’first mission is part of NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, but that goal is unlikely to be achieved. It was a priority in President Donald Trump ‘s administration, but it did not receive the conference funding requested by NASA.

The SLS program is undervalued at more than $ 9 billion, according to an official report from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General.

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Jasmin Moghbeli

Moghbeli stands for a photograph in the Systems Engineering System for the International Space Station and advanced spaceflight programs at the Johnson Space Center on July 9, 2019. She trains for the lunar mission. Photo by Bill Ingalls / NASA

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