Procedure Tests For Ares I Propellant Tanks

NASA and United Space Alliance engineers and technicians working at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center tested procedures they will rely on to handle and load the propellant tanks that will be used on the roll control system of the Ares I. The latest testing on the new Ares I rocket brought together components from an Air Force missile program with support equipment invented for handling space shuttle parts. The Ares I rocket will lift astronauts into space. The evaluation is the latest in a series of studies at NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center leading up to the first test launch scheduled for April 2009. The flight will not carry any astronauts and is mainly a chance to evaluate the performance of the rocket during the first stage of flight. The roll control system is a set of thrusters aligned to turn the Ares I stack soon after liftoff to line the rocket up with its proper heading. The thruster system is the same design as the one used by the Air Force’s Peacekeeper missile fleet. In fact, NASA used parts of a decommissioned Peacekeeper as stand-ins during the test for the Ares I parts. The Ares I is part of NASA‘s Constellation Program. The 323-foot-tall rocket is a pencil-shaped craft that uses a five-segment solid rocket booster as a first stage and a liquid-fueled upper stage. The stack is topped with an Orion spacecraft. The Ares I will loft astronauts to the International Space Station. Later missions call for the rocket to send Orion capsules on the first leg of a trip to the moon.