The first Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage is now being readied for the program’s first launch at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), but the large rocket’s first stop on the way to liftoff was the once-in-a-generation Green Run verification campaign. The vehicle spent over a year in the B-2 position of the B Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where prime contractor Boeing performed an exhaustive checkout of their first build.
The Green Run was expected to take most of 2020, but outside events added to the challenge for the Stennis team handling the big stage. Hurricanes and the largest global pandemic in a century created an extra dimension of complications on top of the large demands that an SLS Core Stage placed on the infrastructure at NASA’s primary rocket testing facility.