14 DAY TRIAL // The Constellation Project is one meant to thoroughly redefine the way in which NASA looks at manned space travel in the solar system. The new class of vehicles will include two types of ARES delivery systems, namely the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as the Altair lunar lander. Still, the goal of seeing these new machines fly may not be as distant as the space agency first announced. During the summer, a prototype of the ARES I rocket, dubbed ARES I-X, will be launched from the KSC, in Florida, in order to assess the progresses made thus far.
The flight will only benefit from a roughly completed first stage, as the second and the third ones are just dummies. However, they are faithful to the original design in terms of weight, shape, size, and configuration. The fourth stage on this flight will contain the Launch Abort System (LAS), which will also be used after the first stage exhausts its fuel. During this test, which will take place as soon as a Kennedy Space Center launch pad becomes available for modifications, engineers will test all telemetric data beamed back by the delivery system.
They will also analyze how the fake module on top behaves, as well as what types of pressures are exerted on the entire craft while on the launch pad, and during the first stages of flight. Mission managers at the KSC will also attempt to recover the ejected first stage, in order to analyze exactly how it separated from the second stage. Finding a problem here could mean that the entire ARES I mission could be further delayed.
“This launch will tell us what we got right and what we got wrong in the design and analysis phase. We have a lot of confidence, but we need those two minutes of flight data before NASA can continue to the next phase of rocket development,” Ares I-X Crew Module/Launch Abort System Deputy Project Manager Jonathan Cruz said, as quoted by Space. In order for that to happen, the delivery system prototype has to go as high as 25 miles (40.2 km), and spend more than two minutes without blowing up, losing altitude, or anything else that may be construed as a failed mission with the real rocket.
“The team's been working many years to get to this point. When you get the last of the hardware here, it really energizes the folks and they begin to think this thing really could happen. It becomes that much more real,” KSC ARES I-X Deputy Mission Manager Jon Cowart added. The new test flight will make use of the Mobile Launcher Platform-1, which was “handed over” from the Space Shuttle Program to the Constellation Project on March 25th. “It truly is a historic day to be turning over a major piece of hardware from one manned spaceflight program to another. It really doesn't happen very often,” Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach concluded.