the coronavirus pandemic It has delayed testing of NASA’s next megarocket, but the months-long process is resuming and has marked a key milestone: turning on the central stage.
the Space launch system, or SLS, will be the most powerful rocket to date when it is first launched, and its debut flight is scheduled for next year. Boeing, the company that NASA hired to direct construction of the rocket, is now testing the center stage of the first SLS at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The qualification procedure is an eight-stage process called the “green run” test and started in January.
“It’s very rewarding,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s chief ecological officer, told Space.com. “This is the first time this test has been run; this is the first rocket of its kind, the largest and most powerful rocket in the world ever built.”
Related: Watch NASA smash a megarocket SLS tank until it explodes (video)
The green run tests will culminate in a hot fire test, during which the rocket will be tethered, but will otherwise resist each step as if a launch were to occur. The Boeing crew currently expects the hot fire test to occur in October, Nappi said.
The process has been slowed down considerably by the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the country this year. The team completed only one test before the pandemic occurred the region seriously in March and the agency leadership halted on-site work in Stennis.
The center slowly reopened in mid-May, and the green running team completed its second test on the central stage in late June. That test fueled the central stage to ensure that the software and other electrical interfaces involved in the rocket and the test bench work properly.
The testing staff will then verify that they can maintain control of the rocket during subsequent tests, even if the critical communications systems fail, a procedure currently scheduled for Monday (July 6), Nappi said. “It is an important precursor to entering the hot fire, knowing that we have redundant ways to be able to put the vehicle out,” John Cipoletti, Nappi’s deputy in eco-testing, told Space.com.
The next two tests will check the valves, hydraulics, and the like at the center stage to ensure the vehicle is ready for more active testing. So he green Team They will step back from the rocket and instead execute an exercise on themselves, following the movements of the final tests.
Those last two tests are a “wet dress test” that looks at the fuel-loaded rocket stage and the full hot fire test to ensure the vehicle is truly ready for launch. Successful testing of wet clothing and hot fire is crucial for engineers to feel confident that the vehicle is safe.
It is an intense procedure but not one that all future core stages of SLS will have to endure. The equipment that supports the tests will be inspected after a successful fire, restored as needed, and then shipped to NASA. Kennedy space center in Florida, where even more tests await the central stage. But eventually, if all goes well, the SLS core will take flight next year and visit the moon, on NASA’s first unmanned mission. Artemis Program which is designed to land humans on the moon in 2024.
“It really is a huge rocket, huge and very impressive in its capacity and size,” said Cipoletti. “Being part of establishing something that will lead people to Mars in the future is a wonderful experience.”
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
