NASA’s mega-sized monthly rocket ran into an engine problem during a critical test on Saturday, and the error could further delay the agency’s effort to send astronauts back to the moon.
The rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), is designed to eventually stand 111 meters and transport astronauts to the moon in the middle of the year until the end of 2020.
The system is an essential part of a larger program called Artemis, an effort of about $ 30 billion to put the boots on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. NASA has spent about $ 18 billion developing the rocket.
The SLS baseline – the largest part of the system and the structural backbone – was assembled and strongly linked at the Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on Saturday for a critical “hot fire” test.
For the first time, the rocket was ready to simultaneously launch the four powerful RS-25 engines, as it would have been launched.
The base stage is the largest and most powerful missile stage in the world, according to NASA. It hosts five network sections, including a 537,000 gallon (2 million liters) tank for liquid hydrogen, a 196,000 gallon (742,000 liters) tank for liquid oxygen, four RS-25 engines, aircraft computers and other subsystems.
Boeing is the main contractor for the stage, and Aerojet Rocketdyne is responsible for its RS-25 engines, which used to propel NASA’s space shuttle fleet.
Fuel tanks were filled with 733,000 gallons of cryogenic-cooled propellants on Saturday, and the engines came to life at about 5:27 p.m. EST.
“It was like an earthquake,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters at a news conference after the test.
“It was a magnificent moment. And it just brought joy that after all this time, we now have a rocket. The only rocket on the face of the planet capable of taking people to the moon was to fire all four RS-25 engines at the same time. “
The engines had to fire continuously for eight minutes. But about a minute after the test, the engine controller sent a command to the base controller to stop them.
Stennis Space Center crews take center stage on Jan. 22 (NASA)
The controllers had seen a twinkle next to the thermal blanket covering engine four. Shortly afterwards, that engine registered an MCF or “major component failure”. It is not yet clear what happened.
“By the time they made the call, we still had four good engines running at 109 percent,” John Honeycutt, SLA program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, told a news conference.
The whole thing was captured on NASA’s live broadcast:
“The amount of progress we’ve made here today is remarkable. And no, it’s not a failure. This is a test. And we’ve tested significantly today, where we’re going to learn and we’re going to make adjustments and we’ll fly to the moon, “Bridenstine said.
The SLS team will spend the next few days examining the test data, assessing the baseline and engines to find out what happened and how to move forward.
NASA may need to repeat the hot fire test
Saturday’s hot fire was to be the eighth and final step in NASA’s “Green Run,” a program designed to carefully test every part of the basic stage before the first launch of SLS, called Artemis 1 – a test flight crew currently scheduled for November 2021.
But this chronology may be unrealistic now. If the hot fire went well, NASA planned to send the rocket to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in February. There, workers would stack all the segments of the two boosters needed to send Artemis 1 around the month.
It is unclear how long it will take NASA to correct the engine error and reach the center stage in Florida now.
“It depends on what the anomaly was and how difficult it will be to fix it. And we have a lot to learn to realize,” Bridenstine said.
“It could very well be something that is easy to fix and we can feel confident that we are going to the Cape and that we are staying in time. It is true that we could find a challenge that will last longer.”
The agency may have to retake the hot fire test. The SLS team wanted to get at least 250 seconds out of the engines pulling together to have high confidence in the vehicle. Saturday’s test lasted just over 60 seconds.
It would take at least four or five days to prepare the Stennis Space Center for another test. If NASA needs to replace current engines with new ones, workers can do so on the spot at the Stennis Space Center. Honeycutt estimated that it would take about seven to 10 days to do so.
“That’s why we’re testing,” Bridenstine said. “Before we put American astronauts on American missiles, then we need it to be perfect.”
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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