‘I came all the way from California for this’: Longtime workers on SLS program excited about successful hot fire test
STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss. (WLOX) - For those who have poured years of their career into the SLS program, Thursday’s successful hot fire test was one more push to keep them working toward the Artemis I mission.
Of all the people that were happy when those four RS-25 engines came to life Thursday for the final Green Run hot fire test at Stennis Space Center, Joe Cassidy and Dan Adamski were among the most excited.
Cassidy and Adamski are part of Aerojet Rocketdyne, the company that put those engines together. Cassidy is part of this current mission. Adamski also worked on this mission, as well as those engines during the Space Shuttle days.
“I retired from Aerojet Rocketdyne in June of 2019 but I worked on the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) program and the SLS program for almost 28 years of my 40 year career,” Adamski said. “I’m super excited about today and actually came out all the way from California just for eight minutes of hot fire testing.”
Adamski’s excitement was justified as the engines roared, the exhaust cloud soared, and NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne got the eight minutes of burn they wanted, which was 499 seconds, to be exact. It was more than enough to collect the valuable data needed for the Artemis program to more forward.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Stennis successfully performs final hot fire test for SLS rocket
“As we go through a launch, you have to kind of slow down when you go through the maximum aerodynamic pressure, or MAX-Q,” said Cassidy, Aerojet Rocketdyne space operations executive director. “We’ll throttle ‘em down, and we’ll throttle them up to 109 percent. As we expend propellent, we want to keep the G-load at a level that’s not too uncomfortable for the astronauts. We always take care of our astronauts.”
Zena Cardman is one of those astronauts, as well as a scientist, explorer and self-proclaimed “rocket nerd.”
“Absolutely, I will claim that,” Cardman said with a smile. “Every time we test, we get closer to the real mission, and when we test enough and things go well, then we know we’re ready.”
The next step will be for the SLS Core Stage to be ferried to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Then, the Orion space vehicle will be installed on top of the core stage for a scheduled unmanned mission to the Moon later this year.
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