NASA's Most Powerful Rocket Will Ferry Us To The Moon

Had been delayed for a couple of years, the Space Launch System of NASA - shortened as SLS - finally came out of the darkness. With the help of this system, the American space agency aims to ferry their crews to the Moon in 2024's missions.

Earlier this month, NASA spokesperson Jim Bridenstine was quoted as saying that SLS is the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever built. The NASA administrator also posted a Twitter video to show how NASA tested the SLS, specifically its enormous fuel tank full of hydrogen liquid. As per a statement from NASA, it's designed to bear over 200% of expected flight loads during nearly 5 hours before engineers found out a buckling point.

The tank will act as a core part of not only in SLS but also in a bunch of upcoming missions to the Moon with its Artemis cargo. To be specific, only SLS is capable of carrying a special NASA spacecraft built for deep-space traveling, codenamed Orion. It'll also pack both astronauts and supplies when traveling to the lunar in no more than one go.

Rather than facing technical pull-backs, NASA had to delay this project due to financial problems, considering that the development budget could exceed a total of $17 billion. Initially, the space agency intended to launch the first test this year. Mike Nichols, the lead engineer of this test, once said about its critical role and emphasized how risky it could be.

With all that said, NASA aims to foster the overall safety and efficiency when developing its "largest-ever" rocket in accordance with the evolvement of future missions. It's now more evident to think of the day we put our footprints on the Moon.