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NASA conducted a large-scale test of a rocket engine, known as a “Flight Support Booster” or “FSB-1”.
During testing, conducted with aerospace firm Northrop Grumman, the 154-foot-long engine fired for just over two minutes, producing 3.6 million pounds of thrust.
The test was conducted at the Northrop Grumman facility in Promontory, Utah. The thruster was anchored to the ground horizontally.
Two similar boosters will be used in NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket the space agency has ever built.
They will provide 75 percent of the energy needed to send the rocket into space.
NASA plans to send the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface by 2024, with the goal of exploring Mars by the mid-2030s.
The successful test sets the stage for a planned unmanned launch from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, next year, ahead of a crewed launch in 2023.
The Artemis program is named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, who is also the goddess of the moon.
