Local engineers work on newest rocket

HAMPTON, Va. - NASA's newest rocket is set to launch next week with the help of engineers from the NASA-Langley Research Center in Hampton.

The "Ares 1-X Rocket" made its way to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida yesterday. The 327-foot rocket is scheduled to lift off next Tuesday for its first suborbital test flight.

Sitting atop the Ares 1-X rocket is the crew module and launch abort system, designed and built at the NASA-Langley Research Center. In just a few days, following about three years of tests and development by local engineers, the rocket will make its first sub-orbital test flight.

"This has been an extremely fast development cycle," said Marshall Smith, Systems Engineering & Integration Chief. "For us to start from a piece of paper, a PowerPoint slide, if you will, and go to actual ready to launch in a little over three years is absolutely amazing."

Smith and his team from Langley say everything is looking good for next Tuesday's Launch.

"All our hardware is in really great shape; we've completed all of our testing. We have some testing that's going on at the pad that will be happening tomorrow and the next few days," he said.

Although this is the first new rocket built by NASA in over 30 years, the crew vehicle and launch-abort vehicle are similar to the ones used on the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program.

"The new developed ones for Ares and Orion are much more capable and safer," said Jonathan Cruz, Project Manager.

"We're building on history, we're building on lessons learned in Apollo and even in shuttle how to go about building a safer crew vehicle and a safer vehicle to get us into orbit and to the moon and beyond," said Smith.

The Ares 1-X will return shortly after leaving the earth's atmosphere. Hopefully bringing with it the data scientist need to return man to the moon and pave the way to Mars and beyond.

The Ares 1-X is the test rocket for the Ares-1, which NASA hopes will replace the Space Shuttle in the next wave of manned space exploration.