NASA tested a new SLS booster that may never fly, and the end of it blew off

Unlike the RS-25 pulling on Stennis, NASA has chosen to broadcast the Booster test. Everything seemed to go up to 1 minute and 40 seconds in the burn, when a very hot exhaust panache seemed to burn part of the booster structure just above the nozzle. A few moments later, the nozzle has disintegrated.

Solid rocket boosters cannot be deactivated after ignition, and for better or for worse, the engine continued to shoot until it was short of propellant about 30 seconds later. The rocket triggered a fire in the hills overlooking the test stand.

It was the first test program for the Obsolescence and Life Extension Program (BOLE), which aims to develop a solid solid booster of more efficient rockets for SLS missions. NASA has awarded Northrop Grumman a $ 3.2 billion contract in 2021 to produce boosters with existing shuttle parts for five SLS (Artemis IV-VIII) missions) and design, develop and test a new Booster design for Artemis IX.

Boosters produce more than 75% of the thrust required to propel the SLS rocket out of the launch pad with the Orion spacecraft to the NASA crew on the top. Four RS-25 engines fuel the main step, collectively generating more than 2 million pounds of push.

Northrop Grumman calls the new booster “the largest and most powerful Segmented Solid Rocket Engine never built for human space flight”.

One of the most important changes in Booster’s Booster design is that it replaces the steel cases of the shuttle era with composite carbon fiber cases. Northrop says that new cases are lighter and lighter. It also replaces the steering system of the booster hydraulic thrust vector with an electronic system. The powered propeller inside the booster is also different, using a mixture that Northrop wraps inside its commercial rocket engines instead of the recipe used for space shuttle.

Northrop Grumman has had trouble with rocket nozzles in recent years. In 2019, a test engine for the Omega rocket, now a company committed, lost its nozzle during a test test in UTAH. Then, last year, a smaller booster made by Northrop flying on the Vulcan rocket of United Launch Alliance lost its nozzle in flight. The Vulcan orientation system and the main engines have corrected the problem, and the rocket has always carried out its planned orbit.