By Marina Malenic
NASA yesterday delayed a $450 million first flight of a next-generation moon rocket that could replace the Space Shuttle.
The first Ares 1-X was rescheduled for 0800 EDT today after clouds above the launching pad at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., and a cargo ship sailing too close to the area caused officials to delay yesterday’s attempt.
Because the Ares I-X is a new design, according to prime contractor ATK [ATK], weather criteria are stricter than for a space shuttle launch.
Yesterday’s attempt was “plagued by weather issues,” according to a NASA statement. The agency was prepared to launch the rocket when a break in the clouds occurred at 9:44 a.m., but a cargo ship in the Atlantic sailed too close to the area at that moment. The launch time was then adjusted by five minutes, according to an agency spokesman, but incoming clouds again stopped the clock with 2 minutes and 39 seconds remaining on the countdown clock. The skies did not clear again before noon, the tail end of the launch window.
The Ares I-X will carry more than 700 sensors to collect data that will allow engineers to refine their designs, NASA officials explained during a press conference earlier in the week.
“As the rocket climbs through the atmosphere, what are the loads and the environment that it has to see?” said Jeff Hanley, manager of the Constellation program. “That’s what Ares I-X is going to inform us most about.”
A blue-ribbon panel reviewing NASA’s human spaceflight program has said that the current Constellation program, intended to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020, cannot succeed with its current budget.
A blue-ribbon panel that studied options for future manned spaceflight finalized a report for the White House last week. The report concludes that a $3 billion annual NASA budget increase is needed to continue with meaningful space exploration.
Ares is part of the Constellation program, one of the five options studied by the Augustine Commission. In addition to the Ares I launch vehicle built by ATK and Boeing [BA], Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] developmental Orion capsule and the longer-term Ares V heavy-lift rocket and Altair lunar lander are part of the program.
Ares substitutes offered in the options include commercial launch services that would carry crew to low-earth orbit, and heavy-lifter launchers that would be derived from the retiring space shuttle or be commercial variations of the Pentagon’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV).
When the Constellation program began earlier this decade, it was intended to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.