Today, NASA rolled out the completed core section of its massive new rocket, the Space Launch System, which is designed to take people into deep space. The core stage, manufactured at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, is now heading to Mississippi where it will undergo key testing before it can launch for the first time.
The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a critical part of NASA’s Artemis program, an initiative to return humans to the surface of the Moon by 2024. When it’s complete, it’ll be the most powerful rocket in the world, rivaling that of the Saturn V rocket that took the first astronauts to the Moon. However, the rocket has yet to actually fly. The SLS has been in development for most of the last…