Mounted in a test facility at NASA's Stennis Space Center in
Mississippi, the Space Launch System's (SLS) 212-foot tall core stage roared to
life at 4:27pm local time (3:57am IST) for just over a minute — well short of
the roughly four minutes engineers needed to stay on track for the rocket's
first launch in November this year.
"Today was a good day," NASA administrator Jim
Bridenstine said at a press conference after the test, adding "we got lots
of data that we're going to be able to sort through" to determine if a
do-over is needed and whether a November 2021 debut launch date is still
possible.
The engine test, the last leg of NASA's nearly year-long
“Green Run” test campaign, was a vital step for the space agency and its top
SLS contractor Boeing before a debut unmanned launch later this year under
NASA's Artemis programme, the Trump administration's push to return US
astronauts to the moon by 2024.
It was unclear whether Boeing and NASA would have to repeat
the test, a prospect that could push the debut launch into 2022. NASA's SLS
program manager John Honeycutt, cautioning the data review from the test is
ongoing, told reporters the turnaround time for another hot fire test could be
roughly one month.
To simulate internal conditions of a real liftoff, the
rocket's four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines ignited for roughly one minute
and 15 seconds, generating 1.6 million pounds of thrust and consuming 700,000
gallons of propellants on NASA's largest test stand, a massive facility
towering 35 stories tall.
The expendable super heavy-lift SLS is three years behind
schedule and nearly $3 billion over budget. Critics have long argued for NASA
to retire the rocket's shuttle-era core technologies, which have launch costs
of $1 billion or more per mission, in favor of newer commercial alternatives
that promise lower costs.
By comparison, it costs as little as $90 million to fly the
massive but less powerful Falcon Heavy rocket designed and manufactured by Elon
Musk's SpaceX, and some $350 million per launch for United Launch Alliance's
legacy Delta IV Heavy.
While newer, more reusable rockets from both companies -
SpaceX's Starship and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan - promise heavier lift
capacity than the Falcon Heavy or Delta IV Heavy potentially at lower cost, SLS
backers argue it would take two or more launches on those rockets to launch
what the SLS could carry in a single mission.
Reuters reported in October that President-elect Joe Biden's
space advisers aim to delay Trump's 2024 goal, casting fresh doubts on the
long-term fate of SLS just as SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin scramble to
bring rival new heavy-lift capacity to market.
NASA and Boeing engineers have stayed on a ten-month
schedule for the Green Run "despite having significant adversity this
year," Boeing's SLS manager John Shannon told reporters this week, citing
five tropical storms and a hurricane that hit Stennis, as well as a three-month
closure after some engineers tested positive for the coronavirus in March. - Reuters