Preliminary result of Ares 1-X: 'rock-steady'

William Atkins
Saturday, 31 October 2009 19:42

Science - Space

According to the NASA article Ares I-X Flight Test, “The flight test is expected to provide NASA with an enormous amount of data that will be used to improve the design and safety of the next generation of American spaceflight vehicles, which could again take humans beyond low Earth orbit.”

NASA added in the article NASA's Ares I-X Rocket Completes Successful Flight Test, "Wednesday's flight offered an early opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities, and ground operations - important data for future space vehicles. During the flight, a range of performance data was relayed to the ground and also stored in the onboard flight data recorder."

"The 700 sensors mounted on the vehicle provide flight test engineering data to correlate with computer models and analysis. The rocket's sensors gathered information in several areas, including assembly and launch operations, separation of the vehicle's first and second stages, controllability and aerodynamics, the re-entry and recovery of the first stage and new vehicle design techniques."

Associate administrator for the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Doug Cooke added, "This is a huge step forward for NASA's exploration goals. Ares I-X provides NASA with an enormous amount of data that will be used to improve the design and safety of the next generation of American spaceflight vehicles -- vehicles that could again take humans beyond low Earth orbit."

Check out a video simulation of the launch and flight at YouTube: Ares 1x-V2.1 Test Flight.

And check out the actual launch at the NASA website: Ares I-X Lifts Off on Flight Test.