Oct 28 2009
From The Space Library
NASA conducted its first test flight of the 327-foot-tall (99.67-meter-tall) Ares I-X rocket, which would launch the Shuttle’s successor craft. The Shuttle’s successor would carry humans to the ISS, the Moon, and beyond. NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington, DC, and the Constellation Program’s Ares I-X mission management office at NASA’s JSC in Houston led the Ares I-X efforts. The prototype launched at 11:30 a.m. (EDT) from the newly modified Launch Complex 39B, a former Shuttle launchpad. The first launch of a new type of rocket from NASA’s KSC since 1981, the launch occurred 48 years and 1 day after the inaugural launch of the Saturn rocket. The test vehicle produced 2.6 million pounds (1.18 million kilograms) of thrust, accelerating the rocket to nearly 3 Gs (G-forces) and Mach 4.76, just under hypersonic speed. The test flight lasted 2 minutes, the time needed for the first-stage solid-fuel booster to burn out and separate from the mock upper stage at a suborbital altitude of 150,000 feet (45,720 meters). Parachutes deployed, and recovery ships collected the booster from the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket carried more than 700 sensors designed to collect data in several areas, including assembly and launch operations, separation of the vehicle’s first and second stages, controllability and aerodynamics, the reentry and recovery of the first stage, and new techniques of vehicle design. Engineers would analyze the data to validate computer models used to design rockets and to test the safety of steering a tall rocket with a single solid-rocket motor. The mission lasted 6 minutes, from launch to splash down of the rocket’s booster stage, nearly 150 miles (241.4 kilometers) down range.
NASA, “NASA’s Ares I-X Rocket Completes Successful Flight Test,” news release 09-252, 28 October 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-252_Ares_I-X_Success.html (accessed 30 September 2011); Marcia Dunn for Associated Press, “NASA’s New Moon Rocket Makes First Test Flight,” 29 October 2009; Kenneth Chang, “NASA Rocket Takes Off as Clouds Break,” New York Times, 29 October 2009; Robert Block, “Ares I-X Flies—But Will Program: Ares I-X Lifts Off from Kennedy Space Center on Short Test Flight,” Orlando Sentinel (FL), 29 October 2009.
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