NASA’s Space Launch System, the USA’s first exploration-class spacecraft since the Space Shuttle, has officially passed the whiteboard formulation stage and moved into full-scale development. The SLS, which will be the most powerful rocket ever built, will allow NASA to land astronauts on Mars and captured asteroids, and perhaps other planets and moons throughout the Solar System as well. The first SLS mission should lift off no later than 2018, sending the Orion capsule around the Moon. Asteroid- and Mars-bound...
