NASA just test fired its next-gen SLS lunar rocket booster – watch it here

NASA has completed the first full-scale static test fire of the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) solid rocket motor, the next-generation solid rocket booster for the space agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) lunar vehicle. 

The 140-second test took place at Northrop Grumman’s Promontory production and test site in Utah on Thursday and was livestreamed on YouTube. You can watch the rocket blasting at full power via the video player embedded at the top of this page.

Using hundreds of sensors to monitor its operation, the test demonstrated the ballistics performance of the BOLE motor design, as well as its nozzle, insulation, and electronic thrust vector control (eTVC) vectoring performance, NASA said.

The firing also aimed to validate the use of new domestic materials and manufacturing processes that are geared toward reducing costs by about 25% over previous designs.

The BOLE motor burned more than 1.4 million pounds of propellant during the procedure, and generated more than 3.9 million pounds of thrust. As a comparison, SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket generates around 1.7 million pounds of thrust at launch, while SpaceX’s mighty Starship vehicle — the most powerful rocket ever built — generates a colossal 16.7 million pounds of thrust as it leaves the launchpad.

Thursday’s test fire began normally, but about 100 seconds in there appeared to be some kind of explosive event in the plume, possibly involving the exhaust nozzle. However, the booster continued to fire for another 40 seconds without any noticeable difficulty. Northrop Grumman has yet to comment on the cause or implications of the apparent anomaly.

Speaking just minutes after the end of the test, Dave Reynolds, NASA SLS booster program manager, said: “It’s a brand new booster from tip to tail, there are so many things that are different about this booster — it actually has very little relationship to the current boosters that are flying on the Artemis II mission that’s coming up. 

“We were expecting to learn a lot of things, and I guarantee that we’re going to spend the next six months digging through all of that data and finding out what we need to do.”

The booster is scheduled to fly for the first time — as part of NASA’s SLS rocket — in the ninth Artemis mission, which is currently scheduled for 2034 and will involve a crewed landing on the moon. However, the Trump administration wants to cut the Artemis budget, instead prioritizing commercial launch partnerships while redirecting focus to the first crewed Mars mission, at the expense of lunar missions. In other words, there’s a chance that this booster will never fly.