14 DAY TRIAL // It was in July 1969 that NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first people ever to set foot on the Moon. It's been decades since this historic moment, and as it turns out, the space agency is at long last ready to kick things up a notch and land crews on another nearby orb: good old Mars.
This past Thursday, NASA announced that its Space Launch System, described as the most powerful rocket in the history of mankind, had officially completed its critical design review and had been cleared for construction.
What this means is the design phase for the Space Launch System is finally completed, and quite successfully so. Now, it's up to engineers to get to work building the rocket's components and then put them together.
“For the first time in almost 40 years, a NASA human-rated rocket has completed all steps needed to clear a critical design review (CDR),” the space agency writes in a statement.
“The agency's Space Launch System (SLS) is the first vehicle designed to meet the challenges of the journey to Mars and the first exploration class rocket since the Saturn V [the rocket that launched astronauts to the Moon during NASA's Apollo program],” it adds.
The rocket should be completed sometime in 2018
NASA hopes it will be done assembling the Space Launch System in a few years and that, come 2018, it will even send it on its maiden voyage, a mission to the Moon.
The agency says that, when all its parts are finally put together, the Space Launch System will stand about 322 feet (98 meters) tall. The rocket will be powered by a couple of twin boosters and four RS-25 engines.
When first assembled, the rocket will have a lift capacity of 77 tons. Then, NASA hopes to successfully increase the lift capacity to 115 tons and finally to 143 tons.
The space agency says the Space Launch System will send astronauts on missions not just to Mars, but also to other celestial bodies in our Solar System. For one thing, there's talk of a mission to send a crew to an asteroid.
“SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built and, with the agency’s Orion spacecraft, will launch America into a new era of exploration to destinations beyond Earth’s orbit,” NASA promises.
