VIDEO: Feel the Power of America’s Next Great Rocket – NASA’s Space Launch System
By Space Coast Daily // June 13, 2015
highest-ever payload mass
ABOVE VIDEO: NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) will be the world’s most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions, including to an asteroid and ultimately to Mars.
NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, is an advanced launch vehicle for a new era of exploration beyond Earth’s orbit into deep space.
SLS, the world’s most powerful rocket, will launch astronauts in the agency’s Orion spacecraft on missions to an asteroid and eventually to Mars, while opening new possibilities for other payloads including robotic scientific missions to places like Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.
Offering the highest-ever payload mass and volume capability and energy to speed missions through space, SLS will be the most powerful rocket in history and is designed to be flexible and evolvable, to meet a variety of crew and cargo mission needs.
In 2013, NASA completed the preliminary design of the SLS and moved into production of the launch vehicle.
Engineers continue to make rapid progress aimed toward delivering the first SLS rocket to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its first launch.
All elements of the program have produced hardware. NASA has approved the SLS program’s progression from formulation to development after completing a rigorous review known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C). This is something no other exploration class vehicle has achieved since the agency built the Space Shuttle.
