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. Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center today completed a series of 11 test-firings of the F-6049's gas generator, a jet-like rocket that produces 30,000 pounds of thrust and was used as a starter for the engine. 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. (More NASA stories.)
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