NASA's Rocket to Nowhere Finally Has a Destination

On a Thursday afternoon in June, a 17-foot-tall rocket motor—looking like something a dedicated amateur might fire off—stood fire-side-up on the salty desert of Promontory, Utah. Over the loudspeakers, an announcer counted down. And with the command to fire, quad cones of flame flew from the four inverted nozzles and grew toward the sky. As the smoke rose, it cast a four-leaf clover of shadow across the ground.

This was a test of the launch abort motor, a gadget built to carry NASA astronauts away from a rocket gone wrong. Made in Utah by a company called Orbital ATK, it's part of the Space Launch System: the agency's next generation space vehicle, meant to ferry humans and cargo into deep space. NASA has tasked Orbital ATK—and other contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Aerojet Rocketdyne—with building SLS and its crew capsule for the kinds of missions NASA hasn’t undertaken since the Apollo days. But for much of the program's six years, NASA didn't know exactly where SLS would go. The agency spent billions of dollars on what critics called a rocket to nowhere.

In June, hundreds of spectators—rocket scientists, astronauts, locals who line the highway for every scheduled test—came to watch the fireworks of the launch abort motor test. Charley Bown, a program manager, had warned it would be very short, very powerful, and very loud. Despite his prep talk, the crowd jumped at "fire." During tests like this one, Bown actually turns from the rocketry and watches the watchers, taking pictures of their faces. “Some people just smile,” he says. “Some have a look of amazement.”

Read more at Wired

Image: Orion (Credit: NASA)