Ares Rocket Roll Control

The Ares I-X test rocket lifted off from the newly-modified Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a two-minute powered flight. The roll control system for Ares I-X consisted of two modules containing engines originally used on now-decommissioned Peacekeeper missiles.

Image credit: NASA

The Ares I-X test flight lasted about six minutes from its launch until splash down of the rocket's booster stage nearly 150 miles down range. This shot was taken from the rocket looking back at the launch pad. The roll control motors were used to control the vehicle during flight.

The Ares I first prototype thruster test was conducted at Aerojet in Sacramento, Calif. These small control rockets can be turned on and off for brief periods of time. This particular design can be pulsed for 1/10th of one second or may be fired 30 or 40 seconds at a time.

Engineers with the Marshall Center and Aerojet of Sacramento, Calif., conducted hot-fire testing for the first of two prototype Ares I roll control thrusters at Aerojet’s state-of-the-art engine test facility in Sacramento.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/multimedia/ares/ares_roll_control.html

Glenn Helps Ares I-X Soar

The future of new rocket design was successfully tested when the Ares I-X blasted off on October 28, 2009. The test vehicle launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and travelled for six minutes until it splashed down 150 miles away in the Atlantic Ocean. Ares I-X, at 327 feet tall and 1.8 million pounds, was comprised of components fabricated at several NASA centers. The Upper Stage Simulator (USS), all 430,000 pounds and 110 feet of it, was developed, designed and constructed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

Vince Bilardo, Ares I-X Upper Stage Simulator Project Manager at Glenn, lead the project from its beginning four years ago through the extraordinary apex of the launch. He shares his thoughts on Ares I-X and Glenn’s essential role in its success.

The Ares I-X Flight Test blasts off from the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Image Credit: Thilo Kranz, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft-und Raumhahrt (German Space Agency)

How did the launch go?
Vince Bilardo: The launch was nearly flawless! Once we got past the weather issues, the countdown and flight went just as planned. The vehicle flew the exact trajectory that was planned. All the data was successfully telemetered to the ground during the flight, the cameras all worked great and provided spectacular images of the flight. We proved conclusively that we can successfully control a tall, slender rocket by small movements in a single rocket nozzle.

How did the Glenn component, the USS, perform?
VB: The Glenn-built Upper Stage Simulator (USS) performed flawlessly, as best as we can determine so far. And that was not just during launch but in all phases of the ground assembly and launch processing prior to the flight. Contrary to speculation, the USS motion after First Stage separation was predicted in several of the “dispersion cases” or simulations that we ran prior to flight. And the entire stage held together after separation all the way down to the water, contrary to some analyses which predicted that it might break apart due to high loads during the tumble down to the sea. It all adds up to a strong endorsement of the robust design and manufacturing concept that our in house team implemented.

What was the experience of being at the launch like?
VB: I was part of the Launch Support Team, which was located in one of the backup launch control rooms called Hangar AE, on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station side. All of the Integrated Product Team personnel that designed and developed the Ares I-X hardware and software were located in Hangar AE. We had to be “on station” at our consoles by 4:00 am for the countdown each of the two launch attempts on October 27 and 28. Then, we had to work some contingency loads analyses to take into account the winds on the actual day of launch and their potential affect on the vehicle structure. So it was a very busy time leading up to the final countdown coming out of the planned hold at the T-4 minute point.

Ares I-X, including the Upper Stage Simulator (USS) built at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, is illuminated the night before launch. Image Credit: Thilo Kranz, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft-und Raumhahrt (German Space Agency)

As we got close to this point, the weather uncertainty took over, and it made for an emotional roller coaster as we thought we had a go, then the weather window would close, then open again another 30 minutes later, and so on. Once we got the count restarted, the final four minutes were very quiet in the room, then once we got to T-0 and saw the vehicle lift off there was elation and cheering, followed by more quiet as we watched closely to for each event during the overall six minute mission. As each of those milestones were hit, there was more cheering, followed by a big round of applause once we saw the FS parachutes open up.

What was it like being a key participant in the Ares I-X launch? What did you and your Glenn team learn from being a part of the project?
VB: It was a thrilling experience, and without a doubt the highlight of my career to date. I believe this is true for all of our USS team members at GRC and across the agency, for this truly was a once-in-a-career historic mission: the first flight of a new rocket vehicle in over a generation, since the Space Shuttle was developed in the 1970s.

We have learned a tremendous amount being part of this endeavor, starting with the hands-on, in house engineering, design, analysis, manufacturing, handling, and transportation we performed with civil servants and in-house contractor team members. We developed rigorous flight hardware processes and procedures, and we put in place improved manufacturing tools and techniques. We also gained the experience of processing the flight hardware for launch in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center.

We have truly built our capacity to be a space flight development center during the execution of Ares I-X.

Tori Woods (S.G.T.)
NASA’s Glenn Research Center

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/moonandmars/grc_helps_aresIX.html

Discs, Flags Commemorate I-X Flight

A few hundred people who don't know whether they'll ever travel to worlds beyond Earth will have their vision for space exploration touch the sky during the Ares I-X flight test.

Homemade videos that were submitted to the NASA Web site and then burned onto three DVDs are being packed inside the first stage of the experimental rocket.

For NASA's Constellation Program, the flight test will be a suborbital flight to prove the first stage of the Ares I design works as planned.

For the video producers, it's a chance to join the first flight of a new NASA rocket. The Ares I-X is the first vehicle designed with astronauts in mind since the space shuttle's debut in April 1981.

Image above:A pair of technicians working inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida place three shoebox-sized packages into the Ares I-X before the rocket is rolled to the launch pad. Each bag was loaded with small American flags to mark the flight test. There is also one DVD containing homemade videos submitted to the NASA Web site in each of the bags. Photo credit: NASA

"It gives them a piece of history that they're going to be part of," said Derek Wang, the NASA outreach coordinator for the video project. "It's using the power of the social media and participatory process."

It's more than a chance to vicariously ride a rocket – the videos also are an opportunity for people to tell the space agency what kind of space exploration they'd like to see.

"The attitude has been really positive," Wang said. "We've had tapes from different countries, we have people who want us to explore more. They definitely want to go somewhere, to a destination."

That desire to leave Earth orbit is a perfect theme for the Ares rockets, said Jon Cowart, the Ares I-X deputy mission manager.

"This rocket in particular excites and inspires because it represents our first tangible step toward new exploration goals," he said. "With the Ares family of rockets (Ares I and Ares V), we will once again be capable of leaving the bounds of Earth orbit and venturing out."

Wang has been sifting through the videos and many of them are posted on agency Web site. All will still fly on the rocket, though.

NASA has flown digitized names on space probes, but Wang said this is the first time homemade videos have been launched.

Although the videos have been produced by outsiders, making a safe place for them is strictly the domain of professional engineers. Cowart said the analysis was not hard in this case, but it had to be thorough.

"I know you're thinking, intuitively, 'It's just a couple of DVDs,' " Cowart said, "but I assure you, objects smaller and lighter than DVDs have hampered missions before by falling in the wrong place at the wrong time."

A few thousand flags also will share the space with the DVDs. Working from designs that flew on STS-96, engineers made three bags, each about the size of a shoebox, to hold 3,500 flags.

Larry Clark, director of Engineering for ATK's Florida operations, and Jim Bolton of NASA came up with the idea of flying flags inside the forward skirt of a solid rocket booster on STS-96 as commemorative items.

The flags moved to the backs of their minds for the STS-96 launch because the focus was on a successful liftoff.

Image above: The boxes holding flags and DVDs are arranged and fastened inside the fifth-stage simulator on the Ares I-X rocket. The boxes are in the first stage of the Ares I-X vehicle and are expected to be recovered intact. Image credit: NASA

"Once the boosters separated and came back down, we were like, "Yay! The flags survived!'" Clark said.

With that success in their minds, Clark and Bolton proposed it again for the Ares I-X mission, this time arranging them to fly in the fifth-segment simulator on the top of the first stage.

"Everyone liked the idea and so we went ahead with it," Clark said.

Technicians plan to recover the first stage of the Ares I-X, which will parachute down to the ocean just like the solid rocket boosters after a shuttle launch. The video discs and flags will be housed in roughly the same area as the parachutes.

The top part of the test rocket, which includes weight simulators for the upper stage and Orion spacecraft, is not scheduled to be recovered after it falls into the Atlantic Ocean.

Once the first stage is brought back to land, the mementoes will be pulled out of the rocket stage and mounted in award plaques to go on display, though exactly where hasn't been established yet.

Wang said plans are in the works to give people opportunities to take part in future missions in similar ways.

Steve Siceloff
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/flighttests/aresIx/discs_on_I-X.html

History in Slow Motion

For more than 40 years, the twin crawler-transporters at NASA's Kennedy Space Center have traveled the gravel track between the massive Vehicle Assembly Building and the two launch pads at Launch Complex 39. These mammoth beasts carried all the Apollo Saturn V rockets, and later each space shuttle, on the last Earth-bound leg of their journeys to space.

On Oct. 19, 2009, a new chapter in the crawler history was written as the first test rocket of the Constellation Program -- the Ares I-X -- was transported slowly along that same gravel track.

May 20, 1969: The Apollo 11 Saturn V rolls from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39A in preparation for the first moon landing during the mission. Image credit: NASA

The towering 327-foot-tall launch vehicle, bolted to its mobile launcher platform, road majestically into the spotlight atop one of the crawlers as it exited the huge building where the rocket was assembled. The combined weight of the Ares I-X, mobile launcher platform and the crawler itself was a whopping 16 million pounds. Moving at less than 1 mph, the crawler safely delivered its precious cargo to the launch pad, just as it had so many times throughout the years.

Dec. 29, 1980: Space shuttle Columbia rolls to the launch pad before the first shuttle flight, STS-1. Image credit: NASA

Crawler Stats

Number of Crawlers: 2
Height: 20-26 feet
Size: 31 feet long, 113 feet wide
Weight: 5.5 million pounds
Fuel Capacity: 5,000 gallons
Fuel Consumption: 42 feet per gallon, 125.7 gallons per mile
Maximum speed: 2 mph
Tread belt shoes: 456
Tread belt shoe size: 7.5 ft long, 1.5 feet wide, 2,200 pounds
Builder: Marion Power Shovel Company

The technology used to build the huge, reliable crawlers capable of such Herculean tasks was deeply rooted in the coal fields of Ohio. There, mammoth machines were used to excavate and extract the precious coal veins running through that part of the country.

But it's doubtful that the crawlers' designers from the Marion Power Shovel Company could have ever imagined their creation would still be moving launch vehicles in the 21st century as yet another generation of rockets prepare to take flight.

Oct. 20, 2009: The towering 327-foot-tall Ares I-X test vehicle, brightly lit against the night sky, rides aboard a crawler-transporter for the 4.2-mile trip to Launch Pad 39B. Image credit: NASA

Phil Koehring, son of the crawlers' engineering designer, said upon the vehicle's 40th anniversary, "This was a machine that was built to last. There were a lot of naysayers about this program in the early days, and all I can say is, 'We've shown them!'"

You can learn more about the history of the crawler, what it takes to drive the mammoth vehicle, and follow the Ares I-X flight test.

Cheryl L. Mansfield
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/flighttests/aresIx/crawler.html

Ares I-X - Building an Original

Ares I-X has completed the first leg of its upcoming mission.

NASA's newest rocket -- currently the largest in the world -- emerged from the Vehicle Assembly Building at 1:39 a.m. EDT Oct. 20, 2009, beginning a 7.5-hour trek through the predawn darkness to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It's the first new vehicle to occupy Launch Pad 39B in more than 25 years.

The 327-foot-tall Ares I-X rocket is silhouetted against the early morning sky as it lumbers along the 4.2-mile route to Launch Pad 39B. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

The goal of the test is to give NASA the chance to see the Ares I flight hardware, facilities and launch procedures in action. With more than 700 sensors on board, Ares I-X is wired to relay ascent data that will be critical for future flights.

The 1.8-million-pound rocket stayed "steady as a rock" throughout the 4.2-mile journey, according to NASA's Jon Cowart, one of two Ares I-X deputy mission managers overseeing the assembly and launch.

"For those of us who've lived with the shuttle and grew up looking at the Saturn Vs, it's obviously a little different than what we're used to seeing," Cowart said as the tracked crawler-transporter carried the 327-foot-tall rocket and its mobile launcher platform to the top of the pad. The rocket's upper stage loomed high above the top of the pad's fixed service structure, surpassed only by the pad's three lightning masts.

Steep ladders mounted inside the upper stage simulator provide the only access inside the vehicle for the installation of instruments and equipment. Image credit: NASA/Glenn Benson

Closer in height to the hulking Saturn V moon rockets than the space shuttle, Ares I-X looks unlike any rocket that's ever stood at Launch Complex 39. But it blends familiar hardware from existing programs with newly developed components.

Four first-stage, solid-fuel booster segments are derived from the Space Shuttle Program. A simulated fifth booster segment contains Atlas-V-based avionics, and the rocket's roll control system comes from the Peacekeeper missile. The launch abort system, simulated crew and service modules, upper stage, and various connecting structures all are original.

Platforms surround the Ares I-X in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Image credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

'We've Got a Rocket'

The fast-paced assembly sequence kicked off in late 2008, when flight hardware began arriving at the Florida spaceport from NASA field centers and contractors across the country.

In order to handle the influx of Ares I-X components, the processing team needed more room than the Vehicle Assembly Building's High Bay 3 and booster facilities could provide. So elements were stored, inspected, fitted or joined together in additional facilities across the space center, and even at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in nearby Titusville, Fla.

The simulated upper stage arrived in November 2008 aboard the Delta Mariner barge after a journey from NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio. In January 2009, a C5 cargo plane carried the full-scale crew module simulator and launch abort system from the agency's Langley Research Center in Virginia to Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility.

As assembly began, NASA Vehicle Processing Engineer Trent Smith was tasked with ensuring the work was done in the right order and that all necessary parts and personnel were available.

A crane lowers Super Stack 3 into High Bay 4 to be integrated with Super Stack 2. Image credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

"When the hardware started showing up, I thought, 'Oh wow, it's here,' " Smith said. "We've got a rocket!"

Along with the crew module and abort tower, the upper stage's seven tuna can-shaped pieces, service module, spacecraft adapter and two interstage connectors were staged in the Vehicle Assembly Building's High Bay 4 prior to stacking.

The funnel-like frustum, forward skirt with its extension, and simulated fifth booster segment arrived from Indiana, where they were manufactured by Major Tool and Machine. First-stage prime contractor ATK Space Systems built the four solid-fueled booster segments, which reached Kennedy in March 2009 after a seven-day, cross-country train ride from Utah.

Stacking Begins

Smaller sections called "super stacks" were assembled first. The two interstage pieces, frustum, forward skirt and extension were mated to the simulated fifth booster segment in early July, completing Super Stack 1.

A day later, the aft, or bottom, segment of the first-stage solid booster rolled into the Vehicle Assemble Building and was secured to the mobile launcher platform in High Bay 3, marking the official start of final assembly.

The Ares I-X aft assembly is moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking. Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann

"When we started stacking, it was a very big deal for us," Cowart said of the Ares I-X team. "We stacked all four of the boosters, then we were ready to bring over Super Stack 1."

Ares I-X finally was taking shape.

The first "tuna can" segment, comprising upper stage segment 1, was labeled Super Stack 2. Upper stage segments 2 through 5 made up Super Stack 3, and Super Stack 4 comprised upper stage segments 6 and 7. Segments 1 and 7 contain steel ballasts weighing a combined 160,000 pounds to mimic the weight of the Ares I liquid propellant tanks.

"I remember going up to Level 34 and looking down, and going on the E roof -- which is right about where the fifth segment simulator is -- and looking up, then down," Smith said. "That's when it really dawned on us that this is a tremendously tall rocket."

Barely five weeks after stacking began, Ares I-X was crowned with Super Stack 5, consisting of the launch abort system, crew module, service module and spacecraft adapter. The completed rocket towered above the surface of the mobile launcher platform, leaving only 10 feet of clearance for the heavy-lift crane to remove the birdcage-shaped framework that lowered the final pieces into place.

Segments of the Ares I-X first stage move past other stacks toward the fifth simulator segment stack at right. Image credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

Assembly of the one-of-a-kind launch vehicle finally was complete. But plenty of work remained. The rocket was put through its paces: a power-up test, or "smoke test," to validate the electronics boxes and wiring; a "sway test" to check the vehicle's response to vibrations it could face during rollout; instrumentation tests; and a simulated countdown and liftoff.

Positioned for Launch

Once Ares I-X arrived at Launch Pad 39B, remaining milestones included a hot-fire of the rocket's auxiliary power units and checkout of the communications, instrumentation and telemetry. On launch day, most team members will be at their consoles seven hours before the opening of a four-hour launch window; Smith will ensure things are going well at the launch pad before retreating to a facility a safe distance away.

A successful liftoff will cap a demanding development and assembly process that Cowart believes illustrated NASA's entrepreneurial capability, as well as the dedication of the relatively small team that brought this flight from paper to reality.

Smith emphasized that the Ares I-X effort involved design centers, research centers, and multiple contractors -- all of which intersected at Kennedy.

"There was some education on all sides. Integrating and communicating were key to our success," he said. "What made it so rewarding was working through all the challenges and frustrations."

The Ares I-X flight test vehicle was still a concept about four years ago, Cowart pointed out.

"This is unprecedented in NASA history, for a rocket of this size," he said. "It's incredible."

Anna C. Heiney
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/flighttests/aresIx/building_original.html