NASA Successfully Tests Upgraded RS-25 Engine For SLS Rocket

NASA announced the successful completion of large-scale static fire tests of upgraded RS-25 rocket engines intended for future lunar missions.

Wednesday, October 17 at the NASA test site at the NASA Space Center. John Stennis (Mississippi) prototype of the redesigned RS-25 engine was started and ran for 550 seconds. As part of the SLA rocket, four of these engines will have to burn for 500 seconds each for the mission to be successful.  Successful operation of the prototype engine under excessive load was the first test of 12 stages that must be passed to obtain a certificate of conformity.

It was expected that the upgraded RS-25 engines, which were inherited by the Artemis lunar program from the Space Shuttle program, would help save significant funds during flights to the Moon and then to Mars. But in practice it turned out that the costs of engines and the rocket as a whole threaten to exceed the budget established for lunar rockets by two or even more times.

Testing of the upgraded RS-25 engines will continue into 2024, and Aerojet Rocketdyne will collect a complete package of data on new key engine components