Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-25 Engine Completes Key Full-Duration Test

The test Thursday afternoon at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi saw the rocket fire for almost nine minutes.

J.P. Donovan Construction has been awarded a potential $45.8 million contract to install land-based support systems onto the Mobile Launcher for NASA’s rockets and space vehicles at the Florida-based Kennedy Space Center.

As mentioned, the RS-25 flew on the rear of Shuttle orbiters in clusters of three, but the SLS core stage will be powered by four of the engines.

NASA first tested some advanced landing gear in Hawaii this summer and today they marked a real milestone – a successful test of the RS-25 engine. The agency also wanted to put the engine through the paces of more extreme start conditions than would be expected during flight. The test will last for approximately as long as the engine would run during a launch, and will focus on the engine’s performance at different thrust levels, ranging to a lower limit of 80%. The test took place at Stennis’ A-1 test stand which was originally built to test the Saturn V second (S-II) stage and it’s five J-2 engines.

SLS and Orion are scheduled to blast off together for the first time in late 2018, on a flight known as Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1). Viwers will see engineers and managers discussing the SLS rocket, Orion, ground systems and the RS-25 engine.

Aerojet Rocketdyne makes the RS-25 engine at its Chatsworth campus.

“The first launch is slated for 2018”.

A number of tiny cubesats will launch as secondary payloads on EM-1; some of these bantam craft will hunt for water ice on the moon, measure how deep-space radiation affects DNA and perform an up-close investigation of a near-Earth asteroid. Unlike the space shuttle program, in which the majority of the motors came back with the shuttle, the Mars missions are one-way trips, so NASA will have to begin buying more of them from Aerojet.