Live At KSC: Ares I-X Status Briefing On Tap At 10 AM

NASA finished rigging the Ares I-X rocket with small explosives on Sunday and is preparing to pick up the countdown to a planned launch early Tuesday.

The 327-foot rocket is scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B at 8 a.m. Tuesday. The launch window that day will stretch until noon.

The weather forecast could be better. Meteorologists at the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron say there is a 60 percent chance cloudy weather or rain showers could prevent a launch on Tuesday.

A countdown status briefing is scheduled at 10 a.m. You can watch it live here in The Flame Trench. Simply click here or the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer. Participants will include:

++Jeff Hanley, NASA Constellation Program manager.

++Bob Ess, NASA Ares I-X mission manager.
++Ed Mango, NASA Ares I-X launch director.
++Kathy Winters, U.S. Air Force weather officer.

Over the weekend, the NASA Ares I-X launch team -- which numbers 30 as compared with 200 for NASA's shuttle launch team -- finished a final launch simulation exercise at Firing Room 1 in the Launch Control Center. The 30 people will be joined by a 12-member Launch Authority Team -- a scaled back version of NASA's shuttle program Mission Management Team -- on launch day.A support team of about 100 people will be stationed in at Hangar AE at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Technicians today will complete closeout work at launch pad 39B, the northern-most of the top KSC pads. The sound suppression system water tower will be filled today and xenon lights will be turned on at the pad at 8 p.m.

Call To Stations in the Firing Room will be at 12:30 a.m. and a seven-hour countdown will start at 1 a.m. at the T Minus 6 hour and 45 minute mark. There will be one built-in hold -- 20 minutes in duration -- at T Minus four minutes.

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Click to enlarge the NASA image of the Ares I-X rocket, bathed in high-power xenon floodlights, at Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B. You can also click the enlarged version to get an even bigger, more detailed view. Photo Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett.