NASA subjected the RS-25 rocket engine to a hot fire test on Nov. 29.

The test was the third in a 12-part series meant to certify new manufacturing processes used by L3Harris Technologies company Aerojet Rocketdyne to produce the version of the engine that will power the Space Launch System for the Artemis V mission and beyond, NASA said Wednesday.

During the test, the RS-25 was made to run for 650 seconds at 113 percent power. During actual operation, the engine would have to run for 500 seconds at 111 percent power. The test pushed the engine past normal operational parameters to provide for a margin of operational safety.

The test was conducted at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. It was overseen by a team of operators from the space agency, Aerojet and Syncom Space Services, the prime contractor for facilities and operations at Stennis.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has deployed a cloud-based ground system-as-a-service, or GSaaS, capability to operate three of its weather and climate prediction satellites.

The GSaaS platform, which was developed by Parsons and its subcontractors in 2022, will bridge data from the legacy Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellites, a.k.a. POES, to the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite Series until 2025, the agency said Wednesday.

The cloud-based system is part of the POES Extended Life contract. It uses the Microsoft Azure application for remote operations, while Arctic Slope Technical Services provides mission architecture support and Kongsberg Satellite Services manages ground antenna services.

Parsons on Tuesday fully assumed operations of the POES satellite trio, delivering their data to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.

POES Extended Life will “lay the groundwork for the future of Low Earth Orbit missions” such as said the Near Earth Orbit Network, Quicksounder and Series 1 missions,” said Tim Walsh, director of NOAA’s Office of Low Earth Orbit Observations.

NASA is on track to proceed with the final design and fabrication phase of its Dragonfly rotocraft, which will be sent to Saturn’s moon, Titan, in 2028.

The agency announced Tuesday that the mission’s total cost, schedule and overall formal confirmation will be announced in mid-2024 by its program management council.

The Dragonfly mission will be the first to use a rotocraft-lander to investigate whether Titan is habitable or if hydrocarbon-based life previously existed on the moon.

Modifications to the expedition’s timeline were made after an assessment of projected fiscal year 2024 funding as well as the Biden administration’s FY 2025 budget request.

“The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “I am proud of this team and their ability to keep all aspects of the mission moving toward confirmation.”

The program is led by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, with partners including Lockheed Martin’s space business and Sikorsky subsidiary.