SLs core stage at Stennis
The core stage of the first SLS being installed on a test stand at the Stennis Space Center earlier this year. Work on the SLS there is suspended as the center moved to Stage 4 of NASA's pandemic response plan.

NASA and Boeing are on track to perform a major static-fire test of the core stage of the Space Launch System in October, a key milestone ahead of a first launch in late 2021.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...