NASA is targeting the week of Feb. 21 for the test in the B-2 Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

For this. media are invited to attend NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s second Green Run hot fire – a test of the rocket’s core stage and all of its integrated systems before its flight on the Artemis I lunar mission.

The hot fire is the final in a series of eight tests to ensure the stage’s systems are functioning and ready for operation.

During the test, engineers will load propellants into the core stage and allow them to flow throughout the system as the four RS-25 engines fire simultaneously to demonstrate that the engines, tanks, fuel lines, valves, and software can all perform together just as they will on launch day NASA states in Press release.

Following the test, NASA will ship the core stage to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where engineers will assemble it with the other parts of the Artemis I rocket and the Orion spacecraft.

The core stage was built at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans with contributions from suppliers across the country. Boeing is the lead contractor for the core stage and Aerojet Rocketdyne built the RS-25 engines. Engineers from Stennis, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and SLS contractors will conduct the test.