Why NASA Will Be Keeping Many Details of This Weekend’s Megarocket Test Secret

The reason for the hush-hush has to do with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) concerns having to do with the sharing, or “exporting,” of sensitive information. In the case of SLS, Whitmeyer said America’s rivals could deduce cryogenic timing information to assist in the development of ballistic missile systems. Accordingly, NASA will be “avoiding any specific timing, flow, or other types of things that would inadvertently give an indication towards specific characteristics of the operations that we’re going through.”

Whitmeyer added that NASA is being extra cautious given “the environment we’re in nowadays,” and said that the space agency can’t risk the disclosure of sensitive information. He’s likely referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and recent weapons tests in North Korea.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, isn’t convinced an ITAR-enforced silence during the SLS wet dress rehearsal will do any good.

“The problem with any such security mandate is that it is typically not being enforced by the people who have the necessary technical understanding to know what is actually helpful to others,” such as China, for example, or “what wouldn’t be helpful,” he told me in an email. “And so, it gets enforced wildly over-enthusiastically, to the point that the degree to which it impedes free communication is more harmful than any risk that it protects against.”

Whitmeyer said journalists will be provided with a general countdown timeline later this week and that a post-test media teleconference will take place on Monday, April 4.

As for the (eventual) Artemis 1 mission, Whitmeyer is hopeful that NASA will “provide the normal calls” during the real launch. That would be grand, but it’s clear we no longer live in “normal” times.