NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, is an advanced launch vehicle for a new era of exploration beyond Earth’s orbit into deep space. SLS, the world’s most powerful rocket, will launch astronauts in the agency’s Orion spacecraft on missions to an asteroid and eventually to Mars, while opening new possibilities for other payloads including robotic scientific missions to places like Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. Offering the highest-ever payload mass and volume capability and energy to speed missions through space, SLS is designed to be flexible and evolvable, to meet a variety of crew and cargo mission needs. In 2015, NASA completed the critical design review – a first for a NASA exploration class vehicle in almost 40 years -- and continues to move forward with production of the launch vehicle. Engineers are making rapid progress aimed toward delivering the first SLS rocket to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its first launch. Flight hardware is currently in production for every ...