SLS Sheds White Paint, Completes Critical Design Review

NASA has announced that the rocket that will eventually take humans to Mars, the Space Launch System (SLS), has successfully completed the critical design review phase, meaning NASA can begin construction.

The milestone clears the way for engineers to begin full-scale fabrication of the Space Launch System, although many components are already being built, NASA said in a statement.

The SLS was invented to be NASA’s most powerful rocket ever ahead of the journey to Mars. Orbital ATK (NYSE:OA) provides the solid rocket boosters that supply more than 75% of the required thrust during the first two minutes of flight, and Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE:AJRD) provides the reliable, flight-proven RS-25 and RL-10 engines for the core and upper stage that carry SLS and Orion into orbit and on to deep space on the first flight of SLS.

The Block 1B planned to be the next configuration in the natural evolution of the SLS will house a more powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) for more ambitious missions with both crew and cargo. Block 2 will add a pair of boosters to offer a 143-ton lift capacity. In each configuration, SLS will continue to use the same core stage and four RS-25 engines.

In the first mission – Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), this configuration will be used to launch an unmanned Orion spacecraft to a stable orbit beyond the moon and back to test the SLS rocket coupled with the Orion before a crewed flight.

The critical design review was completed in July, NASA said, along with a separate appraisal by a standing review board made up of NASA and industry experts outside of the SLS program. A new artist’s rendering of the vehicle shows most of the rocket’s fuselage painted a burnt orange with a few grey streaks on its solid rocket boosters.

Indeed, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen starting with its first liftoff. Now, it’s up to engineers to get to work building the rocket’s components and then put them together.

The rocket has three different configurations – Block 1, Block 1B and Block 2 – that will launch astronauts to the moon and beyond.

View of NASA’s future SLS/Orion launch pad at Space Launch Complex 39B from atop Mobile Launcher at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The next step for the program is design certification, which will take place in 2017 after manufacturing, integration and testing is complete.

The results come nearly two months after the NASA’s program, and its official findings were reviewed by a board of independent industry experts. The SLS budget is projected to cost more than $7 billion from early 2014 through its first test flight, which is expected no later than November 2018.

Looking up from beneath the enlarged exhaust hole of the Mobile Launcher to the 380 foot-tall tower astronauts will ascend as their gateway for missions to the Moon, Asteroids and Mars.

The RS-25 engine fires up for a 500-second test January 9 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The RS-25s, which are, for the most part, leftover Space Shuttle Main Engines, will be used differently (as will the SRBs) than they were during the Shuttle era in that they won’t be reused.