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SALT LAKE CITY — If you’re a space buff, you’ll want to visit Clark Planetarium this week. NASA is showing off its new Space Launch System.
For the past year, NASA has taken a traveling exhibit on a nationwide tour to give a sneak peek to future space travel.
“What we want to do is a grassroots effort to go and inform the public of what NASA is working on,” said NASA spokesman Kirk Pierce.
“Since the space shuttle retired, a lot of people are wondering, what's NASA working on? Well, this is what we're doing," Pierce said. "We're building the next great ship, the Space Launch System rocket.”
NASA retired its three-decade-long space shuttle program about two-and-a-half years ago. Since then, the space agency has been very busy working on the next phase of space exploration.
"The cool thing about the SLS: It's going to be the most powerful rocket ever constructed," Kirk said.
All that power and sophisticated, high-tech equipment will be able to send manned and unmanned rockets much deeper into space, Pierce said.
“2017 is when the first SLS rocket will go," he said. “It will be an uncrewed vehicle that will take the Orion crew capsule around the moon, and then come back.”
NASA’s traveling exhibit just opened at the Clark Planetarium; and if the reaction of hundreds of school children is any indication, the fascination with space travel is still popular.
Replica models and interactive displays show all the components of the rocket.
Utah’s ATK continues to play a significant role in our nation’s space program, and is involved with several major components on the SLS.
“For this system, ATK is building not only the rocket booster that's often associated with us — the 'smoke and fire' — but we're also heading the avionics, the command and control — the brain function of the booster as well," said ATK spokeswoman Holly Infante.
ATK is also building the motor for the abort system in the case there’s ever a launch emergency, Infante said.
Following previous moon missions, NASA has concentrated on low-earth flights, such as the shuttle and the space station. But the future is about deep space: back to the moon, to mars, even to the moons of Jupiter.
As the countdown to the 2017 inaugural launch approaches, the testing and manufacturing of the SLS components are well underway. NASA , ATK and the other companies involved want to show off how it will all work.
“It allows the visitors to learn about the different components associated with the Space Launch System,” Pierce said.
NASA’s interactive exhibit will run through March 2 at Clark Planetarium.
