Nuked The SLS is set to play a key role in the agency’s Artemis program which aims to return astronauts to the moon. This trial run was a vital checkpoint for NASA’s much-delayed space launch system.
The team had planned to have the engines fire for approximately eight minutes, or about the same amount of time it will take to the moon.
Teams are assessing the data on early engine shutdowns in Mississippi. The four engines are still in the air in Mississippi, Mississippi.
The flash occurred around a minute into the NASA broadcast of the test. The exact cause of the shutdown is still unknown. Nasa’s SLS program manager John Honeycutt, NASA’s program manager, believes that the flash happened somewhere near a thermal protection blanket around that engine.
A blog post from NASA said that the flight software ended the test.’during the firing, the onboard software acted appropriately and initiated a safe shutdown of the engines,’ NASA said.
The engineering team had hoped to get at least 250 seconds of the hot fire test. They planned to have the engines move through a series of maneuvers designed to test the responsiveness of the engines while they were lit.
The data that they did manage to get was gathered by about 1,400 sensors during the test. Among other things, the sensors monitored the core for vibration, temperature, acoustics, and stress.
‘we got a lot of great data,’ NASA administrator Jim bridenstine said. The team has’absolutely total confidence in the team to figure out how to fix it, and then get after it again’.
The SLS has been in development for years, and was originally scheduled to make its flight debut in 2017. Instead, it has been plagued by delays and is massively over budget. Nasa had previously pushed back the rocket’s debut to November 2021.
It’s still unclear what triggered the shutdown, and how the results of today’s test might affect the timeline for Artemis I.
We can feel confident going down to the Cape and staying on schedule. We could find a challenge that’s going to take more time.
