Florida, October 29: NASA successfully launched the prototype for a new generation of space rocket, advancing its plans to return man to the Moon by 2020.
The Ares I-X, the tallest rocket ever built, blasted off at 11:30am (02:30 AEDT) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying with it the US space agency’s lofty ambitions for human space flight.
The rocket is the prototype of the Ares I, designed to carry a new capsule-shaped crew module called the Orion into low Earth orbit for missions to the International Space Station, the Moon, and beyond.
“I can’t say enough about this team,” NASA spokesman Doug Cooke said.
“They’ve been together probably a little over three years now, and they went from a concept to flying this vehicle in that period of time, which is the first time this has been done by a human spaceflight team in a long time.”
After a frustrating Tuesday, when several attempts to launch were abandoned, the clouds finally parted long enough for the syringe-like rocket to shoot up into the blue sky above the Kennedy Space Center.
The booster section of the 100m rocket separated from a simulated upper stage after two and a half minutes before dropping to Earth and splashing down in the Atlantic awaiting retrieval.
“It’s the most beautiful rocket launch I have ever seen,” program director Jeff Hanley said when the applause had died down in the NASA control room.
“I get tears in my eyes. It was very special.”
More than 700 sensors should provide engineers with important data for fine-tuning the design of the rocket that with Orion is intended to replace NASA’s aging fleet of space shuttles, which is due to be retired in 2010.
“The vehicle flew well and we are going to get a lot of data back and we are going to learn a lot that will stand us in good stead for the future,” Mr Cooke said.
NASA said the data gathered from the 445-million-dollar launch – the first time in 30 years that a space craft other than a shuttle has blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center – would take several months to analyse.
Ares and Orion are part of Constellation, NASA’s grand program to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020, and then perhaps to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.
Although the shuttle is to be retired next year, the Ares I will not enter into service until 2015 at the earliest.
In the interim, NASA will have to rely on Russia to put US astronauts into space, at a hefty price, too.
The Orion is initially being designed to take a crew of up to six astronauts on flights to the International Space Station, or four on lunar missions of up to 210 days.
Instead of landing like a plane as the shuttle does, it will float back to Earth using parachutes, more like the Apollo module that took Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon more than 40 years ago.
The Orion perches atop the Ares rocket and NASA has incorporated a special launch abort system to enable the capsule to jettison out of harm’s way should something go wrong.
—Agencies