“We gotta shut down:” Artemis Moon Mission Hits a Snag as NASA Aborts SLS Engine Test

HANCOCK, Miss. — Saturday evening at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, hundreds watched as the Artemis I rocket’s prospective core stage put ten years of hard work to the test.

The “Green Run” was scheduled to last for eight minutes.

About 50 seconds after sparking the four RS-25 engines --- previously used in NASA’s Space Shuttles and now repurposed for the SLS --- onboard software “acted appropriately” and began a “safe shutdown” of the test, according to NASA.

At that time, a controller can be heard calling out an “MCF,” an acronym for “major component failure.”

See the test here:

Mobile users, see tweet here.

This was intended to be the eighth and final test scheduled for the Artemis SLS core stage before the rocket is fully assembled and eventually launched.

During a post-test briefing, taking questions about possible delays brought about by the test fire, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters that it’s still too early to tell what comes next:

“I think it very well could be that it’s something that’s easily fixable and we could feel confident going down to the Cape and staying on schedule, it’s also true that we could find a challenge that’s gonna take more time,” Bridenstien said.

“It depends what the anomaly was, and how challenging it’s gonna be to fix it, and we’ve got a lot to learn to figure that out,” Bridenstine said.

John Honeycut, SLS Program Manager, agreed with Bridenstien:

“We have said all along that we would like to get at least to 250 seconds, but I think we need to do our due diligence and go look at the data that we’ve collected to ensure that we got a good plan moving forward,” Honeycut said.

Mobile users, see press conference here.

Engineers are now inspecting the core stage and its four engines while analyzing data from the test in order to determine the next steps, according to NASA.

Cox Media Group