With a Utah-built rocket motor onboard, NASA today planned to slowly roll out at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a working mock-up of the next-generation moon launch vehicle, the Ares I-X.
The towering test rocket is being moved toward the Cape Canaveral launchpad for the first flight test of NASA's Constellation Program, a space plan aimed for lower orbit, the moon and beyond.
ATK Systems of Promontory is the prime contractor for the rocket booster.
The first lumbering motion of the Ares I-X, more than 300 feet tall, out of Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building was targeted for just after 10 p.m. MDT, or just after midnight in Florida.
The 4.2-mile journey to Launch Pad 39B is expected to last about seven hours. Members of the Utah ATK team will be in Florida and at Alabama's Marshall Space Flight Center, watching the test.
"It's a milestone for us continuing the program," said Trina Patterson, an ATK employee who traveled to Huntsville, Ala. "It is really a once-in-a-generation program."
The rocket rollout originally was set for Oct. 19.
But during testing last week, NASA engineers said they detected a nitrogen gas leak in an accumulator in the aft skirt of the rocket.
The space agency reports the accumulator, which absorbs hydraulic pressure spikes as the system operates, was replaced and successfully retested.
The rocket motor was successfully tested last month in Promontory after an aborted first try.
The company hopes astronauts will ride to orbit on Ares I, which uses a single five-segment solid-rocket booster, a derivative of the space shuttle's solid-rocket booster, for the first stage.
But the future direction of the space program, with Ares in it, isn't clear after a presidential panel suggested this fall that private options to build rockets might be used if more money isn't spent on the latest NASA plan.
The phaseout of the space shuttle was blamed for more than 500 positions being eliminated by ATK earlier this month.
The Ares I-X rocket with dummy crew capsule and escape system is targeted to launch Oct. 27 on a 28-mile-high flight test.
NASA officials say the flight test will provide them with an early opportunity to test and prove flight characteristics, hardware, facilities and also ground operations associated with the Ares I rocket.
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Learn More on the Net:
• For NASA Television schedules and links to streaming video, visit www.nasa.gov/ntv.
• For information about Ares I-X, visit www.nasa.gov/aresIX.
• To receive Ares I-X updates via Twitter, go to www.twitter.com/NASA_Ares_I_X.
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