Ares 1X Preps Pick Up Around KSC

A key piece of the Ares 1X rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center over the weekend as preparations for for the first test-flight of NASA's next generation crew launch vehicle continue all around the agency's primary spaceport.

Standing 327 feet tall, the Ares 1X test rocket is scheduled to blast off from launch pad 39B on July 11. The $360 million 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.

You can read all about the vehicle and the test flight here: ARES 1X.

At the pad today, technicians are assembling a giant crane to raise three lightning masts that will tower 600 feet into the sky -- high enough to protect the rocket during stormy weather. Each of the 500-foot-tall towers will be topped by a 100-foot fiberglass mast that will support a web-like catenary wire system.

The initial stages of tower erection already have been completed; the crane is required to finish the job. NASA expects to begin work to complete the towers in a week or so.

In the Vehicle Assembly Building, technicians are building up "super stacks" that will come together to form the Upper Stage Simulator for the Ares 1X rocket.

Check out this very cool drawing that shows all the parts of the Ares 1X test rocket: ARES 1X DRAWING

The Forward Skirt Extension Assembly arrived at the booster Assembly and Refurbishment Facility at KSC on Sunday after a trip from Major Tool & Machine in Indianapolis. The assembly extension will link the fifth-segment space with the rocket's frustrum, which in turn will connect the first and second stages of the Ares 1X.

The Forward Skirt Assembly now is at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville and will be delivered to KSC later this month.

The four shuttle solid rocket motors that will power the rocket are ready on rail cars at Alliant Tech Systems (ATK) in Utah and will be shipped to KSC in late January or early February.

The red-white-and-blue parachute that will lower the first stage of the Ares 1X rocket into the Atlantic Ocean after two minutes of powered flight recently was packed up in the Parachute Refurbishment Facility.

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 the parachute recovery system.

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 in September: Ares 1X -- The Future Begins.

ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the NASA images of Ares 1X activity at the Kennedy Space Center. You can also click the enlarged images to get even bigger views. The first image shows a lightning tower being raised at launch pad 39B. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs. The second shows one of the segments that will comprise the Upper Stage Simulator of the Ares 1X. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann. The final image shows the Ares 1X parachute in the Parachute Refurbishment Facility. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller.