A vintage rocket engine built to blast the first US
lunar mission into Earth’s orbit more than 40 years ago is again
rumbling across the Southern landscape.
The engine,
known to NASA engineers as No. F-6049, was supposed to help propel
Apollo 11 into orbit in 1969, when NASA sent Neil Armstrong and two
other astronauts to the moon for the first time.
The
flight went off without a hitch, but no thanks to the engine it was
grounded because of a glitch during a test in Mississippi and later sent
to the Smithsonian Institution, where it sat for years.
Now,
young engineers who weren’t even born when Armstrong took his one small
step are using the bell—shaped motor in tests to determine if
technology from Apollo’s reliable Saturn V design can be improved for
the next generation of US missions back to the moon and beyond by the
2020s.
Nick Case, 27, and other engineers at NASA’s Marshall
Space Flight Center on Thursday completed a series of 11 test-firings of
the F-6049’s gas generator, a jet-like rocket which produces 30,000
pounds (13,600 kg) of thrust and was used as a starter for the engine.
They are trying to see whether a second—generation version of the Apollo
engine could produce even more thrust and be operated with a throttle
for deep—space exploration.
There are no plans to
send the old engine into space, but it could become a template for a new
generation of motors incorporating parts of its design.
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