NASA’s lunar gas faces another test delay ahead of the vehicle’s first flight for the vehicle Artemis program.
NASA personnel have been conducting a series of tests for months called a ‘green run’ on the first key phase of the agency’s massive new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). The tests take place at the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi before being sent to Florida for the unmanned Artemis 1 launch from the NASA Kennedy Space Center, near Orlando.
In a short update Monday (February 22), NASA said it was reviewing the performance of a valve at the core stage of the SLS, forcing the agency to postpone the second ‘fire test’. A new date for the hot fire has not yet been announced.
Video: How NASA’s SLS Mega Rocket Engine Test Works
The agency confirmed that the valve in question worked properly during the first hot fire test, performed on 16 January. The procedure ended after only 67 seconds, instead of the planned eight minutes, the agency asked to plan the upcoming second test to gather all the necessary data to confirm the rocket works as planned.
The test would take place on 25 February. But during the completion of preparations this past weekend, engineers found that one of the eight valves on SLS “did not work well”, according to NASA, which caused the delay. The green running process has been delayed since late 2020, when the seventh Test in the series, a ‘wet dress’ exercise, also required two tasks.
NASA was face a strict deadline to have the SLS rocket transported to Kennedy by the end of the year for a planned flight around the moon without working, a milestone in the schedule to land people on Artemis 3 in 2024 on the moon.
In recent weeks, there have been some hints that the deadline for 2024 may no longer be a fixed target. Earlier this month, the administration of President Joe Biden committed to ongoing work to land humans on the moon , but the discussion contains no language on the 2024 target set by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Furthermore, the acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk – only appointed last month when the administration took over – recently told Ars Technica felt that the deadline was no longer ‘realistic’, “as NASA did not receive its full request for Artemis grants in previous budgets – including the human landing system (HLS). NASA too interrupts the selection process for HLS earlier this month.
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