NASA’s megarocket is about to blast off toward the Moon Photo by Loren Grush | The Verge Here’s a cheat sheet for the Artemis I mission Okay, space fans. The moment is almost here. NASA is about to launch its next-generation rocket for the first time and send it hurtling out beyond the Moon. It’s going to be a wild time, but honestly, there’s been a lot going on here on Earth, too — and if you’re anything like me, you might be in the market for a quick refresher on what exactly is going down when NASA’s next big thing blasts off. Consider this your SLS cheat sheet as NASA gears up for its big launch on August 29th. What is SLS? It stands for Space Launch System. That seems like a very boring name. It is. But it is also extremely functional, seeing as it refers to a system for launching things into space. What kinds of things can SLS launch? So many things! This version of SLS has four big rocket engines and two solid-state boosters and can carry about 27 metric tons up to the general vicinity of the Moon. That’s more than the space shuttle could carry to low earth orbit but less than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket could carry to the Moon.