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A scheduled test of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket on Saturday quickly derailed, casting doubt on the next steps to send Americans to space and the moon.
The Space Launch System is designed to be the most powerful rocket of all time, with four RS-25 rocket engines and two external thrusters built by Northrop Grumman.
On Saturday, he was scheduled to undergo a hot fire test at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It was planned to be the last test as part of an eight-round ‘Green Test’.
The test was originally supposed to take place in November, but was delayed by a fuel problem discovered during a previous test.
Investor’s Business Daily reports that Saturday’s test lasted just over a minute before ending, however, when it was supposed to last eight minutes.
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A scheduled test of the Space Launch System at NASA’s Stennis Space Center went wrong
Saturday’s test was scheduled to be the last of eight ‘Green Run’ tests for the rocket.
A “major component failure” occurred in one of the rockets, forcing the safe shutdown of all four rockets.
Before the shutdown, NASA was able to fire up the entire system, load over 700,000 gallons of propellant into the tanks, and simultaneously fire the engines in the style of a launch.
NASA was able to get some data from the test, although it would have taken at least four minutes for the organization to get the data they actually needed.
“If we were to have an early shutdown for whatever reason, we get all the engineering data we need to have high confidence in the vehicle in about 250 seconds,” John Shannon, SLS program manager at Boeing said earlier in the week.
However, just one minute after testing, a ‘major component failure’ required a shutdown
The rockets were safely shut down, but there was no initial word on what had happened.
There is no timeline for rerunning the test, but SpaceNews reports that it would likely take at least another week to perform a retest, if NASA decides to do so.
NASA planned to send the core of the Space Launch System to the Kennedy Space Center in February to combine it with the Orion spacecraft, but that is now in doubt.
The rockets are powerful enough to propel the Orion to 24,500 mph, which is the speed needed to get a spacecraft to the moon.
The timeline for the Space Launch System has been delayed several times, as it was originally supposed to launch in 2016.
The rockets were able to fire simultaneously in the form of a launch before closure.
The Space Launch System is supposed to be the most powerful rocket ever made
The Space Launch System will take the Orion spacecraft back to the moon at 24,500 mph
The Trump Administration established a timeline that would make the Space Launch System part of getting astronauts back to the moon by 2024, but Joe Biden has not committed to that same timeline.
There is still hope of launching Artemis I, an unmanned test flight, by the end of 2021.
Rocket development costs are projected to reach $ 9.1 billion according to NASA’s associate administrator for manned spaceflight, 30 percent above the original estimated cost.
In a blog on NASA’s website, the agency said: ‘All four RS-25 engines were successfully fired, but the test was stopped early after about a minute. At this point, the test was fully automated. During the trip, the on-board software acted appropriately and initiated a safe shutdown of the motors.
“During the test, the propellant tanks were pressurized and this data will be valuable as the team plans the way forward. In the coming days, engineers will continue to analyze data and inspect the center stage and its four RS-25 engines to determine the next steps. ‘
A NASA briefing on the test was expected later Saturday night.
Twelve people have walked on the moon in the history of mankind. However, there has not been a lunar landing since 1972 and NASA has not sent any astronauts into space in nearly ten years, as private companies like SpaceX have begun to fill the void of manned space exploration.
