NASA plans to launch its most powerful rocket in August

NASA plans to launch its most powerful rocket in August

Web Desk
August 11, 2022

NASA plans to launch its most powerful rocket in August

The Space Launch System (SLS) is set to be launched by the end of August.
It will be the most powerful rocket ever made.
Its first stage is powered by four RS-25 shuttle-era engines.

NASA hopes to launch the most powerful rocket ever made by the end of August. Let’s look at the Space Launch System (SLS), how launch dates are set, and how you can watch the launch of this scientific supermassive live and for free.

The SLS is a rocket that is truly huge.

Fully piled with its Orion crew module, it rises 320 ft tall — the equivalent of 33 Lady Dimitrescus — on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center launch pad.

Its first stage is powered by four rebuilt RS-25 shuttle-era engines and two massive solid fuel strap-on boosters, which can provide 8.8 million pounds of thrust during launch. The 1960s/70s Saturn V rocket that took people to the moon generated 7.5 million pounds of power.

The upper component of the SLS contains an engine designed to push the rocket’s payload, including its crew capsule, out of low-Earth orbit and toward the Moon.

NASA and its allies intend to use this capability to return astronauts to the Moon in the Artemis Program. NASA’s goals with Artemis are to create a permanent human presence on the Moon and develop the technology needed to safely deliver humanity to Mars.

This ambitious strategy would entail lifting a lot of resources out of Earth’s atmosphere and into lunar orbit, where the SLS comes in.

Despite billions of dollars and a decade of planning, the rocket’s inaugural launch may fail. The SLS was a massive engineering and scientific challenge, and it wasn’t always straightforward.

In the lead-up to launch, testing of the rocket’s many components revealed significant design flaws.

Setbacks pushed the rocket’s initial launch from 2017 to 2022. A big delay. NASA’s Inspector General Paul Martin told congress earlier this year that each SLS launch might cost $4.1 billion US. That’s more than Cassini’s 20-year cost.

NASA’s pricey, long-awaited, and untested rocket would fail catastrophically on its inaugural launch.

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