NASA successfully test-fired part of its most powerful rocket system
On Tuesday, engineers fired up a rocket motor that will be part of the most powerful rocket ever launched to space.
This booster is part of the Space Launch System (SLS) mega rocket, which will be the most powerful system ever flown when it makes its first test flight expected in about two years.
The rocket roared to life for its 2-minute test in Promontory, Utah, at 11:05 a.m. ET, and it seemed pretty impressive for people witnessing it live.
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Tuesday's firing marks the second time the booster has been tested, and these qualifying trials are important because engineers need to understand how the rocket will function during flight.
The only way to do that, aside from actually flying the booster, is to gather data on the ground.
The first test, in 2015, looked at the rocket's performance at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the warmest the booster can be to successfully launch, NASA said. The firing Tuesday tested the motor at the cold end of that temperature range, cooling the test rocket down to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Engineers will now begin the hard work of looking at the data gathered during the test to figure out exactly how the rocket behaved during what looked like a clean test.
The test also came complete with an intrepid robot arm that extinguished the residual fire coming from the rocket at the end two-minute firing.
The SLS's first test launch is expected in 2018, when it sends an uncrewed Orion capsule to beyond the moon for a three week mission designed to prove some of the technologies needed to send humans farther into space than ever before.
NASA hopes that astronauts will use the SLS to fly to an asteroid, or maybe even Mars, sometime in the coming decades.
The rocket booster is up to 15 percent more powerful than Saturn V was, and far more powerful than SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
