Ares 1-X test flight target now July 12

NASA's first test flight of a new moon rocket is being pushed back to July 12 as a result of the delay in the agency's fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, officials said today.

And that date for the Ares 1-X test flight would be further delayed if launch of the Hubble servicing mission moves from a tentatively targeted liftoff in February to the next flight opportunity in May.

That was the word today during a wide-ranging media teleconference NASA staged to provide an update on progress being made in Project Constellation -- the effort to send American astronauts back to the moon by 2020.

NASA Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley said the agency still aims to launch the first piloted flight of an Ares 1 rocket and an Orion spacecraft by March 2015 -- the date promised to Congress. But internally, agency engineers are shooting for a September 2014 target.

NASA also is conducting a study to determine if the five-year gap between the last shuttle mission and the first Ares-Orion flight can be reduced.

Both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have said they would increase NASA funding by $2 billion to minimize the gap and reduce sole reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

Former Kennedy Space Center manager Ralph Roe, now head of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center at Langley Research Center, is heading the review.

Hanley said the Constellation Acceleration Study aims to determine whether the first piloted flight could be moved up by 12 to 18 months. A 12-move advance might be possible; an 18-month advance would be very difficult to achieve, he said.

The Ares 1-X test flight had been targeted for launch April 15. But shuttle Atlantis now sits on the mobile launcher platform that the Ares 1-X test vehicle is to be erected upon, and the delay in the Hubble mission also is stalling modifications at launch pad 39B.

NASA wants to keep that pad "shuttle ready" so that a rescue mission could be launched to save the Hubble servicing crew if Atlantis sustains critical damage in flight. A second shuttle will be on the oad ready to go when Atlantis blasts off, and some pad modifications cannot be completed until after the Hubble mission.

Hanley and other NASA managers also shot down recent reports that have been highly critical of the Ares 1 rocket.

NASA Ares Program Manager Steve Cook said reports that there has been a "revolt" in the astronaut office over the Ares 1 are just not true.

NASA astronaut Brent Jett, who also served as director of the Flight Crew Operations Diractorate at Johnson Space Center, said the astronauts have been intimately involved in the design of the rocket and risk mitigation efforts.

"We have not found one person in our office with a dissenting opinion," Jett said.

Hanley, Cook and Doug Cooke, NASA deputy administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, labeled recent reports that the Ares 1 would collide with its launch tower as "inaccurate."

A published report over the weekend claimed that a southerly wind of just 12.5 mph would push an Ares 1 into its tower as the rocket blasts off.

Cook said the Ares 1 would be able to withstand launch winds of 34 knots -- nearly double the 19-knot limit for space shuttles.

Meteorological studies also show that the type of southerly wind that could cause problems would crop up only 0.3 percent of the time at Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B, which is being modified to accomodate Ares 1 rockets, Cook said.

Cook and Hanley also dismissed talk of launching the Orion spacecraft on upgraded Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rockets -- so-called Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles, or EELVs.

Hanley said NASA studied that option before selecting the Ares 1 and Ares 5 launch vehicle architecture.

Cook said a switch to EELVs at this point would only lenghten the amount of time it would take to field next-generation U.S. space transportation systems.

"Just watch the gap grow if you go down that line," Cook said.

Ares 1 is "twice as safe" for crews than EELVs, he said. He also said it would be 25 percent less expensive to field the Ares 1 and Ares 5 vehicles.

The NASA managers also discounted recent reports from Brevard County space lobbyist Robert Walker that "Ares 1 is on the chopping block."

Hanley noted that Congress recently passed a NASA authorization bill for fiscal year 2008 that showed bipartisan support for the agency and Project Constellation.

"I don't see any indication that there is anything but robust support for Constellation," he said.

Walker, a former congressman who held key positions on House space subcommittees, holds a $180,000-per-year contract to lobby on behalf of the county in Washington, D.C.

ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the NASA artist's concepts of the Ares 1-X test vehicle. The top images shows a bird's-eye view of the rocket ascending from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. The second image shows the 327-foot-tall rocket on the beachside pad.