Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Ares 1 passes design review

NASA's Ares 1 rocket has passed its preliminary design review. Here's Eun Kim's report from Washington ...

NASA officials gave themselves a hearty pat on the back tonight after wrapping up a major evaluation of the new Ares 1 rocket that will help send astronauts back to the moon.

"We have had a thorough review of this vehicle from a lot of different angles with over 1,100 reviewers" from seven NASA field centers, said Steve Cook, manager of the Ares Projects at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

"We have a design that's sound," Cook said. "... It makes sense to go forward on."

The major challenge is the extreme shaking that has plagued the development of the Ares and could potentially endanger the lives of the astronauts in the Orion capsule.

The skinny rocket is a modified space shuttle solid rocket booster and upper stage engine. Tests show it might resonate like an organ pipe in flight.
Last month, NASA officials said they plan to use the equivalent of major shock absorbers to help buffer the astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft, which is the primary payload for the new rocket.

Another area that potentially poses risks deals with weather.

"We'd like to be able to fly through some clouds. The question is, what kind of particulates are in the clouds?" Cook said. Engineers will be evaluating whether the rocket will need to handle hailstorms and lightning strikes off the launch pad, he said.

Doug Cooke, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems mission, called the end of the preliminary design review a "big day in our lives," one that follows three years of work. The project now moves into the "critical design review" phase that allows for a more thorough evaluation of system elements.

NASA plans to introduce the Ares 1 rocket by March 2015 -- five years after the agency's shuttle fleet is retired. The target for the first moon mission is 2020. NASA officials said they're on target for those dates.

They're also working with officials from NASA headquarters who are exploring the idea of extending the life of the shuttle and what potential conflicts that might have on Constellation's development.

Image note: Above is an artist's concept of the Ares 1X test flight, planned for next year from the Kennedy Space Center, the first in a series of launches aimed at perfecting the vehicle's systems in advance of human flights that could begin as early as fiscal year 2015.

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