Tasked with building rocket boosters for NASA that are powerful enough to lift spacecraft into deep space, teams at Northrup Grumman fired up the world’s largest rocket motor Wednesday in Promontory, Utah.
Anchored horizontally in the sandy desert ground, the giant 1.6 million pound booster ignited a massive billowing plume of smoke and flames, producing more than 3 million pounds of thrust during the two-minute-long successful test.
You would usually hear hundreds of people cheering at this point but due to Coivd-19, crowds could only view it online.
In fact, according to Charlie Precourt, Vice President of Propulsion Systems at the company, the pandemic has caused a shortage in the supply chain for one of the propellent ingredients, aluminum powder, and this test will help determine if their new source for the stuff works.
Data from the test will also verify updated technologies for future motors, ones that will boost NASA’s Space Launch System rockets. Precourt says the motor has the propulsion power needed to get humans on to the moon and Mars.
“This is gonna be our path to the stars for the future,” Precourt said.
The Northrup Grumman rocket booster is an essential part of NASA’s Artemis program that aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2024, explore it, and use the experience gained there to take the next giant leap to Mars.