ARES I-X Reaches Launch Pad, Prepares for Take-Off

For the first time in more than 27 years, NASA has opened the doors of its Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to let through a new class of rockets, the precursors of the ARES I delivery system. The ARES I-X prototype booster stands 327 feet (100 meters) tall, and represents NASA's hopes for space exploration. A success in its launch would mean that the space agency will have another ace up its sleeve as it prepares to face mounting criticism against Project Constellation and its future plans.

A trek that began at 1:39 am EDT (0539 GMT) ended some seven hours later. The rollout sequence began almost an hour behind schedule, due to some minor glitches. The engineering team for the rocket promptly took care of it, and the ARES I-X proudly made its exit from the immense hangar in the sounds of cheers and under several bright spotlights. The vehicle was being carried by the second-largest tracked vehicle in the world, an Apollo-era Crawler Transporter. “Ares I-X is rolling!” NASA commentator George Diller said at the time.

“The Ares I-X is going to fly straight up and straight out. During that time we'll be testing the stage separation to determine how well the first stage separation motors perform, as well as the performance of the booster itself, namely the parachutes and other apparatus that will deploy,” Diller added. ARES I-X's mission is to perform a suborbital flight, in which various systems that are to be inserted in the new ARES I rocket will be tested. Experts have outfitted the rocket with a dummy second stage and an Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, all weighing as much as they would in the case of an actual launch.

The new rocket weighs 1.8 million pounds (816 tons). Together with the Mobile Launch Platform and the crawler-transporter vehicle, the combined weight of the entire ensemble reached as much as 16 million pounds (7.2 million kilograms), Space reports. The prototype rocket has three days to launch, between October 27-29. In each of the three days, the craft will have a four-hour window in which conditions would be most appropriate for its departure. Already, the launch date for space shuttle Atlantis has been delayed until November 16, to ensure that the test flight has as many chances of taking off when it's supposed to as possible.