The Americans have successfully tested the engines for a rocket that will fly to the Moon – ČT24 – Czech Television

The current test was the last of a series of eight aimed at verifying that the missile’s central stage was ready to launch missions. All four RS-25 engines developed in collaboration with Boeing were ignited and then ran for eight minutes. About 2.6 million liters of fuel were consumed. The test data will now be analyzed.

The previous test ended prematurely in January. The engines were able to ignite for about a minute, although the engineers had originally planned to stop the ignition after eight minutes in order to simulate a rocket flight into Earth orbit.

This is what the start looked like when viewed from space:

The massive SLS rocket is a key part of the new American research program of the Moon, called Artemis. It will consist of three stages. The first (Artemis 1) will be an unmanned flight of the new ship Orion around the Moon and back to Earth. The second stage (Artemis 2) will be the same flight of Orion around the Moon, but with a human crew.

The third stage (Artemis 3) involves sending astronauts to the Moonway space station near the Moon, and later, tentatively in 2024, envisages the landing of the first woman and another man on the Moon. By 2028, NASA expects long-term research on the moon.

An ambitious project is becoming more expensive

The development of the new SLS missile is now three years behind schedule. Compared to the original plan, the budget was exceeded by three billion dollars, Reuters reported. Critics are trying to convince NASA that it should prefer the services of commercial companies such as SpaceX or the United Launch Alliance, which are much cheaper. One launch of the SLS will cost about $ 1 billion, while the launch of the slightly less powerful Falcon Heavy rocket costs around $ 90 million.

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The last astronaut to stand on the lunar surface was Eugene Cernan, a native of Chicago in 1972, whose ancestors came to America from Bohemia and Slovakia.

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