NASA released an extraordinary picture of workers readying a Mars rocket engine for testing.
The picture shows workers setting up the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule for testing at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. The SLS will be taller than the Statue of Liberty when fully assembled and carry twice the weight of NASA’s older Space Shuttles.
Credit: (NASA/Rad Sinyak)
President Donald Trump wants to use the rocket to return U.S. astronauts to orbit the moon by 2020, and go onto Mars soon after, according to leaked internal documents. The rocket is currently scheduled to send U.S. astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.
SLS’s pair of solid five-segment boosters will work with the spacecraft’s main engines during the rocket’s initially flight, providing more than 75 percent of the thrust the SLS needs to break free from Earth’s considerable gravitational pull.
NASA’s plans to have the SLS and Orion carry astronauts to Mars has been repeatedly sabotaged by the Obama administration, which was accused of leaking information to the press about missions and has threatened to veto the projects.
America is currently better prepared to visit Mars than it was to visit the Moon in the 1960s, according to a study by NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The total costs of current plans to send Americans to Mars comes out to roughly $35 billion spent by 2025 to arrive in 2030.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].