Watch NASA test its most powerful booster rocket ever
We know: The progress toward NASA using the SLS (or Space Launch System if you aren’t into the whole brevity thing) has been painfully slow, starting way back in 2011. Today marks a significant step toward it shooting astronauts into the furthest reaches of space, however — testing its booster system. The trial run was two minutes long (the same length as it would be during an actual launch) and in those 120 seconds, the Utah-based booster produced 3.6 million pounds of thrust. NASA says this is one of two tests necessary before the system gets cleared for a trip to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the next one takes place in early 2016.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Ts9sFtUSeQE?rel=0
These boosters provide some 75 percent of the thrust needed to escape Earth’s cruel gravity, and the ground-based experiments work to ensure that they won’t conk out (or worse) on the launchpad. We’re still at least a few years away from boldly going where no one’s trekked before, but at least we’re making progress to getting there.
[Image credit: NASA]
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