Ares I-X Flight Test Slipping to October

NASA's first flight test of a next generation rocket intended to replace the space shuttle is expected to slip another two months, to Oct. 31, officials said Tuesday.

Managers of the Ares I-X flight test continue to analyze potential technical problems, including vibration levels during the flight, while renovating a Kennedy Space Center launch pad.

Once targeted for April, the critical test now will occur well after a blue-ribbon panel reviewing the future of NASA's human spaceflight program issues recommendations to the Obama administration.

The review committee is expected to evaluate by next month whether NASA's proposed Ares I rocket is the best option for returning crews to orbit after the space shuttle is retired next year, if flights stay on schedule.

The 10-person committee chaired by former Lockheed Martin Corp. CEO Norman Augustine is scheduled to host a public meeting July 30 in Cocoa Beach.

The targeted Halloween launch of the Ares I-X flight test is tentative and must be approved by new NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who has not yet been briefed on its status, officials said.

If processing work proceeds without glitches and schedules can be accelerated, the launch could move up to mid-October, said George Diller, a NASA spokesman at Kennedy Space Center.

The $360-million test flight is the first of six planned before NASA hopes to launch astronauts atop an Ares I rocket in March 2015.

The rocket would launch a crew of four in an Apollo-style capsule called Orion, first to the International Space Station and later to the moon.

Between the last shuttle flight next year and 2015, NASA plans to purchase rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

Data from the Ares I-X flight test is supposed to help the agency assess the design's safety and stability.

A four-segment solid rocket booster like those used by the space shuttle will power the test rocket. It will also carry mock-ups of an additional first stage segment, the upper stage, an Orion crew capsule and a launch abort system.

KSC workers last Friday completed stacking of the first stage on a mobile launcher platform in the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building.

Ares I-X managers plan to meet next Tuesday to decide when to begin stacking the upper stage, probably in early August.

Meanwhile, "tiger teams" of engineers have been analyzing potentially excessive launch vibrations, and managers must decide if modifications are needed before moving forward with the upper stage.

Modifications are ongoing to launch pad 39B - about a mile north of the lone remaining shuttle launch pad - including the addition of giant arms that will help keep the 321-foot rocket stable during a four-day stay at the pad before liftoff.

Those renovations couldn't begin in earnest until late May, after shuttle Atlantis completed its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope and the pad was no longer needed for a rescue shuttle.

Earlier this month, Jon Cowart, deputy Ares I-X mission manager, said that mid-September was a realistic target for the launch but that a slip to October was possible.

He attributed the delays to the challenge of building a rocket for the first time.

IMAGE NOTE: In the Vehicle Assembly Building's High Bay 3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on July 17, workers secure the attachment, or mating, of the Ares I-X forward segment to the forward center segment atop the aft assembly (aft segment and aft skirt). Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller