ARES I-X One Step Closer to Test Flight

The American space agency will complete this week two historic milestones in its strife to have the ARES I-X test vehicle ready to launch by later this summer. With the preparations at Launch Pad 39B now underway, after the facility was transferred from the shuttle program to Project Constellation, NASA is working hard to get the new vehicle operational as fast as possible. At the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, two new components will be delivered to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) soon, which will mark the first time in 25 years a new vehicle will sit atop the Mobile Launch Platform.

On Thursday, engineers at the KSC's Assembly Refurbishment Facility (ARF) shipped out the forward assembly, made up of the forward skirt, forward skirt extension and the frustum. The components were delivered to the Rotation Processing and Surge Facility, where they will be attached to the aft motor segment. As soon as this operation is complete, the entire system will be delivered to the VAB, where it will be stacked on top of the Mobile Launch Platform.

“This is a very exciting week for the team to have the hardware moving out of the ARF, showing how much progress we've made and that we are that much closer to launch,” Bob Ess, from the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, shares. He is the mission manager for the NASA ARES I-X test flight. “This week is the culmination of tremendous hard work and dedication by the entire NASA and contractor team. These milestones are leading us to a flight test later this year that will provide our proof of concept data for NASA's next generation of launch vehicles,” ATK Space Systems expert Joe Oliva, the ARES I-X first stage program manager, adds.

The new vehicle will not be a fully functional rocket, but rather a collage of existing technologies, which will go on the real ARES I, and dummy equipment, which will simulate the actual shape, size and weight of the real rocket. The test flight will provide essential telemetry for NASA's engineers, who will thus be able to better identify the challenges confronting the delivery system. They also want to assess the level of turbulences that affect the craft, and by how much they influence the final flight trajectory.