Most powerful rocket – thrust (current)
Who
SLS Block 1
What
36,786,000 newton(s)
Where
United States (Kennedy Space Center)
When

The most powerful currently active rocket design is the Space Launch System (SLS), operated by NASA (USA). The Block 1 model of the SLS, which generates a peak thrust of 36,786 kN (8.27 million lbf), made its first launch at 06:47 (UTC; 01:47 EST) on 16 November 2022 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.


The first flight of the SLS represented an important shift in direction for NASA. Since the end of the Apollo program, the agency's human spaceflight activities had been focused exclusively on low-Earth orbit. The Space Shuttle, which was NASA's sole human-rated launch vehicle from 1981 to 2011, was not designed to ever venture far from Earth. Its role was to travel to orbit and back, while its crew launched satellites, conducted experiments and, later, built the International Space Station.

In the late 2000s, as the Shuttle was making its last flights, the decision was made to entrust these more routine orbital activities to a group of private space companies, including SpaceX and Boeing. This would then free up NASA to design its next human-rated vehicle around more adventurous exploration missions. The result was the SLS, which is the largest rocket NASA has commissioned since the Saturn V.

The Artemis I mission was a basic test of the rocket and the Orion crew capsule that it is designed to carry (which is why the rocket was painted with checkerboard patterns for later video analysis). Artemis II (scheduled for 2024) will be a crewed test, taking a human crew on a trans-lunar flight for the first time since 1972. Artemis III (scheduled for 2025) will see humans returning to the surface of the moon.

The SLS is a technological descendant of the Space Shuttle, reusing many components and concepts from the STS (Space Transportation System; the term for the whole Shuttle stack). Most recognizable are the solid-rocket side boosters and the distinctive orange-foam-covered central fuel tank, but there are many others. In the case of the four RS-25 rocket engines that power the core stage, it's not just the designs but the actual components that have been reused. The RS-25s on Artemis I were all former Space Shuttle Main Engines with a total of 30 launches between them.

The side boosters (called Five-Segment Reusable Solid Rocket Motors) have a record of their own. They are the most powerful solid-fuel rockets ever constructed. Each is a 50-metre-tall cylinder packed with more than 600 tonnes of fuel (a resin-like mixture of aluminium powder, ammonium perchlorate and a polymer binder). Once ignited, these rockets burn for 126 seconds providing 14,590 kN (3.3 million lbf).

It seems likely, however, that the SLS will not hold this record for long. The SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy (currently undergoing testing in Boca Chica, Texas) has an on-paper launch thrust of 75.9 MN (17 million lbf) and a nominal payload capacity of 100,000–150,000 kg (220,000–330,000 lb). At the time of the SLS's first launch, however, Super Heavy has not flown, nor has it been static-fired (tested on the ground) at full power.