For several months, NASA employees conducted a series of tests on the SLS rocket’s main stage at the John Stennis Space Center (Mississippi). This stage will then be transported by barge to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The rest of the components of the Artemis-1 mission are already at KSC.

In January, NASA conducted a critical fire test of its Space Launch System super-heavy rocket’s main stage engines. Still, it was interrupted too early due to overstated safety parameters. Then NASA and Boeing announced their readiness to conduct repeated tests on February 26 at 2:00 Moscow time.

However, now the American agency has reported that one of the eight valves on the main stage of the SLS is not working properly – in this regard, the engineers were forced to postpone the fire test, and a new date has not yet been announced.

NASA confirmed that the valve in question worked properly during the first firing test on January 17. At that time, the procedure ended in just 67 seconds instead of the planned eight minutes – this was not enough to collect all the necessary data to confirm the main stage’s readiness.

SLS is facing over budget and behind schedule. Earlier it was planned to launch in mid-2020, but experts decided to conduct all-important tests and firing tests at the Stennis Space Center and launch in mid-2021. Now, the launch of an uncrewed mission to the moon can happen at best in October this year. However, at present, NASA considers this term unlikely, and another delay will clearly not help with implementing the plan.