NASA Investigates Early Shutdown Of Moon Rocket Engine Test

Central Florida Public Media | By Brendan Byrne

Published January 19, 2021 at 5:26 PM EST

The Space Launch System rocket core stage comes alive during the Green Run hot fire test on Jan. 16 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Photo: NASA

NASA engineers completed a preliminary investigation into Saturday’s SLS engine test that resulted in an early shutdown of the test.

NASA wanted to fire the four engines of the SLS core stage booster for at least two and up to eight minutes, but instead the test software shut it down about 67 seconds after firing.

In a blog post, NASA said a power unit that controls the gimbaling of one of the engines exceeded parameters set by the test, but the parameters were intentionally conservative to protect the rocket hardware.

If the same issue happened during an actual flight, NASA said a backup unit would have kicked in and the rocket would continue flying.

The so-called hot fire test is the final milestone in SLS’s green run campaign, a final check-out before shipping the rocket to Kennedy Space Center ahead of a planned 2021 launch.

It’s still unclear if NASA will attempt another hot fire test before shipping the hardware and if the planned launch date will move into 2022.