page_title: Space Launch System
section_title: Development history
hierarchical_section_title: Space Launch System / Development history
caption_attribution_description: English: NASA has designed the Space Launch System as the foundation for a generation of human exploration missions to deep space, including missions to the Moon and Mars. SLS will leave low-Earth orbit and send the Orion spacecraft, its astronaut crew and cargo to deep space. To do this, SLS has to have enough power to perform a maneuver known as trans-lunar injection, or TLI. This maneuver accelerates the spacecraft from its orbit around Earth onto a trajectory toward the Moon. The ability to send more mass to the Moon on a single mission makes exploration simpler and safer.
context_page_description: The Space Launch System is a super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle, which has been under development by NASA in the United States since its announcement in 2011. It will be the primary launch vehicle of NASA's deep space exploration plans, including the planned crewed lunar flights of the Artemis program and a possible follow-on human mission to Mars. The SLS program has replaced the Constellation program's Ares V launch vehicle program of 2005, which never left the development phase. SLS is intended to replace the retired Space Shuttle as NASA's flagship vehicle. Following the cancelation of the Constellation program, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 envisioned a single launch vehicle usable for both crew and cargo. In 2013, SLS was projected to possibly be the most capable super-heavy lift vehicle ever built.
  The initial variant of SLS, Block 1, was required by the US Congress to lift a payload of 70 tonnes to low Earth orbit, but it was later planned to exceed that requirement with a rated payload capacity of 95 tonnes. As of 22 December 2019, this variant is planned to launch Artemis 1, Artemis 2, Artemis 3, and Europa Clipper.
caption: Planned evolution of the Space Launch System, 2018 (not shown is a Block 1 Cargo that Europa Clipper may launch on)
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