Sick Burn! NASA Fires Off Test of Next-Generation Rocket Engine

Lying horizontally, the engine for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket booster released a massive blast of flame and a wall of black smoke for two solid minutes during today's Qualification Motor-2 (QM-2) test (see photos of the test here). This is the last engine test before NASA's Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) in 2018, in which SLS will send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a flight beyond the orbit of the moon and back to Earth. Eventually, NASA aims to use Orion and SLS to send humans to Mars