WASHINGTON — Blue Origin has achieved a new milestone in the development of the engine that will power the lunar lander it seeks to provide for NASA’s Artemis program.

The company announced Dec. 4 that it started a fourth series of hotfire tests of the thrust chamber for the BE-7 engine. That thrust chamber was fired for 20 seconds on a test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where the company did previous tests of the engine.

“This thrust chamber test measured the ability to extract energy out of the hydrogen- and oxygen-cooled combustor segments that power the engine’s turbopumps, the key to achieving high engine performance,” said John Vilja, senior vice president of engines at Blue Origin, in a company statement.

Circa 2012

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The spacecraft are still feeling the sun billions of miles from home.

The RC cars are designed by Frank Stephenson of BMW, McLaren, and Ferrari fame, and will blast off on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

They were coasting to the Moon when a ruptured oxygen tank derailed the mission.

50 years later, watch “Apollo 13: ‘Houston, We’ve Had a Problem’” to see how a tale of tragedy would turn into a tale of triumph: https://youtu.be/MdvoA-sjs0A

Thanks to Stephen Slater and Ben Feist/Apollo in Real Time (apolloinrealtime.org/13) for providing additional footage and audio. Thanks to Andy Saunders for providing additional enhanced images.