( BBC ) US future giant Rocket boosters intended to power the first stage of flight on Nasa's next rocket has been tested in Utah.
The ATK booster, developed as part of Nasa's Constellation project, is a development of the solid rocket motors used to lift the space shuttle off the launch pad.
President Obama cancelled the Constellation project in February, but there is still a strong chance that the ATK booster could play a part in future Nasa launch vehicles.
Nasa's Alex Priskos said the data gathered from the test was "absolutely excellent", giving "the chamber pressures and the thrust pressures that we were expecting".
A further test ignition has taken place on the giant booster intended to power the early flight phase of Nasa's next big rocket.
The five-segment motor is an upgraded version of the four-segment booster that currently lifts the space shuttle off the launch pad.
The test took place at manufacturer ATK's facility in Utah.
Nasa is currently in the process of developing a successor to the 29-year-old shuttle, which will retire in 2011.
The new vehicle's design is uncertain, however.
The larger ATK booster was developed as part of Nasa's Constellation programme, a multi-billion-dollar project to build the rockets and spaceships capable of taking astronauts back to the Moon.
But in February, President Barack Obama announced that he wanted to cancel the project and instruct the US space agency to investigate new technologies before embarking on the development of a next-generation rocket.
The static booster was expected to produce a maximum thrust of 16,000 kilonewtons, or 3.6 million pounds. The current four-segment solid rocket boosters on the shuttle produce about 14,600kN, 3.3 million pounds of thrust.
Nasa's Alex Priskos said the data gathered from the test was "absolutely excellent", giving "the chamber pressures and the thrust pressures that we were expecting".
ATK's first test of a five-segment booster took place in September last year.
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