Ares Strikes A Pose :  NASA
In preparation for its October 27th test flight, the Ares I rocket has successfully made its way to the launch site at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Situated on launch pad 39B, the Ares I represents the first step towards NASA's new, post-shuttle era.

This is the first new rocket design to blast off from that launch pad in almost 25 years. The rocket arrived at the launch pad at 9:17 AM yesterday, after a six-hour slow roll from its hanger. It took another 15 and a quarter hours to get the rocket fully situated.

The test comes on the heels of last month's successful test-firing of the rocket's first stage. Originally, NASA planned to launch the rocket on Halloween, but moved the date up to the 27th. If the weather holds and all goes as planned, the next phase in NASA's exploration of space will lift off around 8 AM next Tuesday.

[via NASA]

4 Comments

Is the space shuttle going to a planet, moon, or just plain space? If just space, when will nasa plan to travel to a planet with humans? If they do plan to land on a moon or a planet, then good job nasa!

Wonder how/if they fixed the engine output and vibration issues.

Before yall get your hopes up this rocket is FAKE it is only to test roll control and to verify the effectiveness of the thrust vectoring of the solid rocket motor under less load. "successful test-firing of the rocket's first stage" Wrong they decided for some retarded reason to not use the real first stage but use a smaller and space shuttle motor not the real one that will be used on the true rocket, this older motor has less segments and produces significantly different thrust so this test wont validate much it cant even fly to the proper altitude for stage separation. They have already made the real motor and tested it why not use the freeken thing on something useful?

I had no idea that everyone here was rocket scientist that worked at NASA. Who would of guessed. If you don't worked with NASA I would put in an application immediately because obviously you know way more than all the engineers and scientist there. It's always amazing that people can "research" stuff on the internet and then become an expert.



Download Our iPhone App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed



Become a Fan On Facebook

Share links with friends, comment on stories and more


December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

Check out the best of what's new here.

Popular Science Photo Pool


Share your photos in the Pop Sci pool at www.flickr.com!
tags_sprite.png
POP_embeddedForm_cover_May09.jpg