NASA finally admits the first flight of its new monster rocket won’t happen next year
Numerous government reports have predicted that NASA’s next big rocket, the Space Launch System, won’t be ready in time for its first launch in 2018 — and now months of speculation have finally become reality. NASA is going to push back the vehicle’s inaugural flight, potentially to some time in 2019, according to one of the agency’s top officials. It’s another major delay for NASA’s human exploration program, aimed at sending astronauts into deep space and on to Mars.
The delay was confirmed today by NASA’s Bill Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for human exploration and operations. He detailed the decision in a written response to the Government Accountability Office, which just did an audit of NASA’s current human exploration…
