WASHINGTON (AP) - It'll be the world's most powerful rocket ever -- and it could eventually be the one carrying Americans into space.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and members of Congress joined today in unveiling the Obama administration's general plan for its rocket design, called the Space Launch System.
The rocket will carry astronauts in a capsule on top. But the first mission will be 10 years off, if all goes as planned.
A NASA official says it'll be tough to build. But he says when it's completed, the U.S. will have the ability to go beyond a low-Earth orbit like no other nation will have.
The size and shape -- and the heavier reliance on liquid fuel as opposed to solid rocket boosters -- are much closer to the old Apollo spacecraft than to the recently-retired space shuttles.
Officials say the idea is to launch the first unmanned test flight in 2017, with the first crew flying in 2021 and astronauts heading to a nearby asteroid in 2025. From there, the hope is to send the rocket and astronauts to Mars -- at first just to circle, but then later landing on the Red Planet -- in the 2030s.
