NASA readies to test history's largest, most powerful booster for its new rocket

NASA's massive heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which will one day ferry humans to deep-space destinations and back, has become notorious for the scale of engineering backing it. In September 2014, agency administrator Charles Bolden had unveiled the world's largest welder to mark the start of the SLS's construction. Next, on March 11, NASA will test history's largest and most powerful booster that will power the SLS.

The booster has five stages, and has been adapted from the four-stage version used for the Space Shuttle program. It is 47 meters in length, 3.6 meters in diameter, and weighs 801 tons. The test-fire will be conducted by prime contractor Orbital ATK at its T-97 test stand in Promontory, Utah, at 11.30 am EDT (9 pm IST) on Wednesday.

Even though the booster's components have been verified in the past, the addition of the extra stage makes it a new configuration that engineers must test for once more.  Wednesday's test, in this context, will be for the full duration - two minutes - for which it will be expected to fire on launch day, although it will be laid horizontally on a test-bed (like in the video below).

The maximum thrust it produces will be about 16 million newtons, burning 5,500 kg of solid propellant per second. On the SLS itself, two such boosters will join four RS-25 engines to generate a combined thrust of 37.3 million newtons. (To compare, an Airbus A380-800 uses four Rolls-Royce Trent engines to generate a combined thrust of 0.96 to 1.68 million newtons to fly.)

Here's a video from 2009 showing how one of these tests goes (Don't miss it when the commentator says, "Amazing display of power" at 1:36).