The rocket stage is vertical on the B-2 Test Stand in Stennis but is heavily strapped down. If all four engines perform normally, they'll produce about 1.6 million pounds of thrust for 485 seconds, or just over eight minutes — the length of time required to deliver an upper-stage rocket and Orion spaceship into orbit.
NASA's last major test-firing of an SLS component happened on September 2, when Northrop Grumman successfully. Two of the solid-fuel boosters will strap to the core stage and provide about 75% of the force required to heave SLS off its launch pad and toward space during the first two minutes of flight.
If the core stage's hot fire goes well, NASA will ship the rocket to Kennedy Space Center in Florida in February. By that time, workers are expected to have stacked all the segments of two boosters required for sending Artemis 1 around the moon. "Our team is locked in and focused on delivering the rocket for a 2021 launch," John Honeycutt, the SLS program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday. "This powerful rocket is going to put us in a position to be ready to support the agency and the country's deep-space mission to the moon and beyond.
NASA TV plans to broadcast live coverage of the test starting at 4:20 p.m. ET, which you can watch via the embedded YouTube player below.
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