NASA's Ares 1X Test Flight Faces Slip

The first in a series of test flights aimed at returning American astronauts to the moon faces a significant slip from its official April 15 target date, but NASA can't say now exactly when the $320 million Ares 1X mission will fly.

NASA officials acknowledge that the mid-April target no longer is viable, and it appears the test flight might be pushed back to the late summer or fall of 2009.

Here's the situation:

Atlantis is stacked atop the mobile launcher platform that the Ares 1X rocket is going to be erected on, and the shuttle's next mission -- NASA's fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing flight -- is being delayed until February or March at the earliest.

NASA aims to launch the test flight from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B, but modifications necessary to host Ares 1X cannot be finished until after the Hubble mission. The agency is keeping the pad "shuttle ready" in case Atlantis is critically damaged during the Hubble mission. A second shuttle will be perched on pad 39B when Atlantis launches just in case a rescue mission becomes a must.

What's more, NASA is not entirely sure when the Hubble project will be ready to fly.

A spare science instrument control and data formatter is being qualified for flight at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It's tentatively scheduled to be delivered to KSC in January -- a milestone that would have to be met to fly the Hubble mission in February.

"They getting ready for some tests now at Goddard to make sure that box is ready to go fly, and once they understand and sort out what their schedule is, then we'll figure out the right place to put them in the (shuttle launch) sequence," NASA space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said Sunday.

"Right now, we're looking at some time in the February-March timeframe," he said. "And if they can't make that launch window, we've got another opportunity in the spring and we can move them over there."

The Ares 1X mission will be the first of four test flights slated to be carried out under a $1.8 billion contract to design, develop and test the rocket's first stage: a five-segment solid rocket booster derived from the space shuttle system.

The inaugural test flight will employ a mix of flight hardware and mock-ups: A four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster topped with fifth spacer segment and mock-ups of the Ares 1 second stage, Orion spacecraft and Launch Abort System -- a tractor rocket system of small thrusters that would pull the Orion space capsule away from the Ares 1 in an explosion or other emergency.

The mass simulators atop the four-segment solid rocket booster will sport outer mold lines that are aerodynamically exact copies of the rest of the Ares 1 rocket and Orion spacecraft.

The goal of the test flight is to determine whether the first-stage flight control system will keep the slender "single-stick" on course -- and intact -- during the crucial first two minutes of flight.

The system that separates the first and second stages also will be tested along with a parachute recovery system that will lower the first stage to the Atlantic Ocean.

Standing 327 feet tall, the Ares 1X will be outfitted with 751 sensors that will take 969 measurements, collecting data on the rocket's vital flight control systems.

The data gathered will inform the Ares 1 Critical Design Review now scheduled to take place in 2010.

Check out the finer details in this white paper written by Stephen R. Davis of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2008 Conference and Exposition in San Diego last month: Ares 1X -- The Future Begins.

NOTES ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the NASA artist's concepts of the Ares 1X test vehicle, which is officially targeted for April 15 but almost certainly will be delayed until later in the year. You can also click the enlarged images to get even larger views. The top image is slick Ares 1X mission art designed to look like a movie poster. Look closely and you'll see some of the players from KSC. The second image shows the Ares 1X test vehicle on launch pad 39B, which is being modified to accomodate the $320 million mission. Some of the work that will be stalled until NASA can launch the STS-125 Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission is apparent. The third image is a bird's eye view of the Ares 1X test vehicle during a rapid ascent from launch pad 39B. Image credits: NASA.