NASA Successfully Static Tests It's New RS-25 Engine

January 9, 2015 NASA successfully completed a static test when it started and ran it's new RS-25
engine.

NASA to Build Largest Rocket To Date!

Check out some of these very impressive stats

A  rocket that will tower at 384 feet tall, set to become the largest rocket ever built, dwarfing even the mighty Saturn V rockets of the Apollo era

This rocket, sitting on the launch pad will weigh 6.5 million pounds

NASA's recently released schedule for the new Space Launch System notes that the space agency will begin testing the engines that will be used.  SLS will use 4 sls rs-25 liquid fuel engines with two outboard SRBs.  If the RS25 designation sounds familiar, they are indeed shuttle main engines that provided massive lifting capabilities.  These engines  have undergone modifications.  At launch the SLS rocket will be providing 9.2 MILLION lbs of thrust.

The schedule calls for the SLS' first test flight 2017. 

Read more of Mail Online article HERE

NASA SLS Peeks

NASA unveiled peeks of the proposed new heavy launch rocket called the Space Launch System or SLS. 

The news launcher will set a record as the largest payload ever built.  Still under construction, the SLS will have its inaugural flight sometime in 2017.  The first payload will weigh in at 77 tons which in and of itself is amazing as that is three times what the Shuttle could put into low Earth orbit.  Once the initial flights have proven the system sound (NASA just recently took delivery of the flight control electronics which will be tested on a frame to simulate a launch with all the flight control hardware situated on the frame as it will be on the SLS) NASA will modify the system to carry 143 tons, more that any other rocket in history.  With lift capabilities like these, the SLS could conceivably lift a spacecraft larger than the shuttle and still have enough left over to send it on a deep space mission.

NASA is confident that the new rocket would allow for direct routes to many of the destinations that now have to depend on gravity assists and coasting for much of the flight.  Direct routes would cut transit time in half. 

Check out the complete IO9 article HERE

Animation of NASA's Space Launch System

From the NASA site is a short animation of the proposed Space Launch System.

As the site states:
>an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening up new discoveries from the unique vantage point of space.

Check out the animation here