SLS has the payload capacity of 130 metric tons (22 elephants) and accelerates to 17,000 miles per hour in only 8.5 minutes. It is claimed to be the most powerful rocket in the world, which could not only carry out the Artemis mission, but also manage any future expedition to Mars.
For the Artemis mission, SLS is going to carry the Orion Spacecraft, the crew vehicle, to the Gateway which is a proposed station on the lunar orbit. From there, the astronauts could fly to the Moon’s surface with the innovative integrated Human Lander System, proposed to NASA by Boeing on 5th November.
The “Fewest Steps to the Moon” approach was developed to, as stated in Boeing’s news release, minimise the complexity and maximise the safety of the mission. The HLS can dock both with Gateway and Orion, so additional spacecraft is not needed.
The SLS program was widely criticised for its cost. The Office of the Inspector General discovered that Boeing was paid $287.2 million above the fixed price contract due to delays in missions, to ensure the company remains a second commercial crew provider. This excluded SpaceX from the competition despite them previously proposing shorter production times.
NASA does not publicly disclose the details regarding the pricing of the contracts, although the cost of the SLS program between 2011 and 2018 is estimated to be over $15 billion.
