What's Next For NASA's Giant Moon Rocket?

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MIT Technology Review 's What's Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them  here .

"It's absolutely in Elon Musk's interest to convince the government to cancel SLS," says Laura Forczyk from the US space consulting firm Astralytical. "However, it's not up to him."

SLS has been in development for more than a decade. The rocket is huge, 322 feet (98 meters) tall, and about 15% more powerful than the Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 70s. It is also expensive, costing an estimated $4.1 billion per launch .

The rocket has launched once already on the Artemis I mission in 2022, a test flight that saw an uncrewed Orion spacecraft sent around the moon. Its next flight, Artemis II, earmarked for September 2025, will be the same flight but with a four-person crew, before the first lunar landing, Artemis III, currently set for September 2026.

SLS could launch missions to other destinations too. At one stage NASA intended to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter's moon Europa using SLS, but cost and delays saw the mission launch instead on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October this year. It has also been touted to launch parts of NASA's new lunar space station, Gateway, beginning in 2028. The station is currently in development .

Starship is currently undergoing testing. Last month, it completed a stunning flight in which the lower half of the rocket, the Super Heavy booster, was caught by SpaceX's "chopstick" launch tower in Boca Chica, Texas. The rocket is ultimately more powerful than SLS and designed to be entirely reusable, whereas NASA's rocket is discarded into the ocean after each launch.

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