Latest news with #JimKalberer
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Northrop Grumman tests future Artemis booster, but suffers destructive ‘anomaly'
Northrop Grumman saw some fiery drama during a test of a more powerful version of the solid rocket booster that would be used if NASA's Artemis program ever gets to its ninth launch using the beleaguered Space Launch System rocket. During a Thursday live stream by NASA of a static fire of the 156-foot-long Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) solid rocket motor, the end nozzle blew apart, sending debris flying across the camera followed by a black plume of smoke rising up from Northrop's Promontory, Utah test site. 'Whoa,' said one of the test controllers during the stream, just after the 100-second mark of the hot fire. Laying on its side, the booster was burning through the same amount of fuel that it would as if used on a launch. Northrop Grumman officials addressed the nozzle's demise in a press release later Thursday. 'Today's test pushed the boundaries of large solid rocket motor design to meet rigorous performance requirements,' said Jim Kalberer, Northrop Grumman's vice president of propulsion systems. 'While the motor appeared to perform well through the most harsh environments of the test, we observed an anomaly near the end of the two-plus minute burn.' The test is for a booster that wouldn't fly until at least next decade, and only if NASA sticks with SLS as a rocket option for its Artemis missions. 'As a new design, and the largest segmented solid rocket booster ever built, this test provides us with valuable data to iterate our design for future developments,' Kalberer said. Under the current NASA plan, the first eight Artemis launches use an SLS rocket with boosters that produce 3.4 million pounds of thrust each. The pair, combined with the core stage, created 8.8 million pounds of thrust on the Artemis I launch in 2022, which still is the most powerful rocket to ever make it into orbit. The BOLE version would increase thrust to 4 million pounds each, which would push SLS to near 10 million pounds of thrust on Artemis IX. The Trump administration's proposed budget for NASA, though, wants to kill off the use of the SLS rocket after Artemis III, although Congress is the ultimate decision-maker on what gets funded. So until directed otherwise, contractors continue to work on future versions of the SLS. Northrop Grumman's solid rocket boosters for Artemis are enhanced versions of similar boosters used during the Space Shuttle Program. The BOLE design is a solution to components no longer in production. The update uses a carbon fiber composite case and a different propellant formula among other features. The goal is a 10% increase in booster performance over the boosters used on Artemis I. That would equate to SLS being able to carry another 11,000 pounds of payload to lunar orbit. The nozzle issue was reminiscent of another Northrop Grumman booster problem seen in 2024. SpaceX Crew Dragon with 4 Axiom Space astronauts docks with space station Kennedy Space Center goes retro for Y2K after-hours event SpaceX launches historic mission to space station on new Crew Dragon dubbed 'Grace' Space Coast launch schedule With SLS rocket future uncertain, L3Harris still cranking out engines That's when a nozzle flew off of one of the boosters used on the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Certification-2 mission from Cape Canaveral. That incident contributed to a delay in the Space Force giving ULA the OK to fly national security missions. Northrop Grumman officials, though, said the ULA and Artemis boosters are not directly related. 'It is an entirely separate product,' said Mark Pond, senior director of NASA programs for Northrop Grumman's propulsion systems during an Artemis II media day last December at Kennedy Space Center. Artemis II is slated to launch no later than April 2026 on what would be the first crewed mission sending four astronauts on a trip around the moon, but not landing on it. 'From a concern standpoint, we've met all of our requirements, we've done all of our testing, we've met all of our acceptance tests and our delivery requirements, and for that reason, we are not concerned from an Artemis II perspective,' he said.
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
NASA's Next-Gen Rocket Booster Explodes in Test of a Design That May Never Fly
While the fate of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket hangs in the balance, the agency is pushing ahead with tests of new components needed to launch the vehicle toward the Moon. The latest test included the firing of a solid booster meant to replace NASA's shuttle-era rocket parts. Although the new booster started off strong, its nozzle appeared to get blown off around two minutes after it began firing its motor. On Thursday in Utah, Northrop Grumman conducted the first full-scale static fire test of the newly built solid rocket booster. NASA's Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) is the 'world's largest and most powerful segmented solid rocket motor,' according to Northrop Grumman. The test lasted for a little over two minutes, burning more than 1.4 million pounds of propellant. Toward the end, however, an unusually bright plume appeared to suddenly burn through parts of the booster, resulting in a large fireball and flying debris. In the video (shown below), the anomaly appears at the 22:15 mark. 'Today's test pushed the boundaries of large solid rocket motor design to meet rigorous performance requirements,' Jim Kalberer, vice president of propulsion systems at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement. 'While the motor appeared to perform well through the most harsh environments of the test, we observed an anomaly near the end of the two-plus minute burn.' The anomaly was likely caused by a faulty nozzle on the booster. 'The nozzle liberated energetically from the motor around 10 seconds before the burn ended, and there appeared to be some debris leaving the nozzle just before the main disintegration of the nozzle happened,' NASA Spaceflight reports. Northrop Grumman developed the new booster under a $3.2 billion contract with NASA. The booster features carbon-fiber composite cases, which are meant to be lighter and stronger than the shuttle-era steel cases currently on SLS. Instead of the SLS booster's current hydraulic thrust vector control steering system, BOLE uses an electronic system. It also uses a different propellant formula that's meant to increase performance by around 10% and adds another five metric tons of payload. NASA's massive, fully expendable Moon rocket is under heavy scrutiny. The 5.75-million-pound SLS was built using components from NASA's Space Shuttle program, which ran from 1981 to 2011. SLS is outfitted with four RS-25 engines originally built by Aerojet Rocketdyne for the shuttle project. NASA has a total of four contracts with Aerojet Rocketdyne for the RS-25 engines and Northrop Grumman for the boosters, which were also used during the Shuttle era, before the space agency switches to the newly designed BOLE. The new booster is intended for use on SLS beginning with Artemis 9, which is currently scheduled for 2034. SLS is a capable heavy-lift rocket, but it's ultimately unaffordable. The launch vehicle has already gone $6 billion over budget, with the projected cost of each SLS rocket being $144 million more than anticipated. That would increase the overall cost of a single Artemis launch to at least $4.2 billion, according to a report released in 2024 by the office of NASA's inspector general. In its budget proposal for 2026, the U.S. administration laid out a plan to phase out SLS and its Orion capsule, replacing them with commercial substitutes. To be clear, SLS is not officially dead, but it doesn't look good. Despite the uncertainty surrounding SLS, NASA carried out another test of the rocket's components last week. On June 20, the agency tested an RS-25 engine at the Fred Haise Test Stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. This was the first hot fire test of the new RS-25 engines, and it lasted around eight and a half minutes or 'the same amount of time RS-25 engines fire during a launch of an SLS rocket on Artemis missions to the Moon,' according to NASA. NASA seems to be making progress with the new designs for its SLS rocket, but it's not clear whether these new parts will get to launch a mission to the Moon.
