The four RS-25 engines at the bottom of NASA’s first Space Launch System core stage shut down about a minute into a ground test-firing Saturday that was supposed to last more than eight minutes.
The four Aerojet Rocketdyne-built engines ignited at 5:27 p.m. EST (2227 GMT) Saturday on the B-2 test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The engines, leftovers from the space shuttle program, throttled up to generate 1.6 million pounds of thrust.
But a technical fault caused an early shutdown of the engines, cutting short the planned eight-minute firing. Going into the test, officials from NASA and Boeing — the prime contractor for the SLS core stage — said they needed to fire the four engines for about 250 seconds — a bit more than four minutes — to gather all the data needed to make the test a success.
See our Mission Status Center for continuing coverage of the SLS core stage’s Green Run tests in Mississippi.