NASA Declares Ares I-X a Success; Report of Problems With Staging, Parachute
NASA manager have declared today’s flight of the space agency’s Ares I-X rocket to be a success:
“I can’t say enough about this team,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “They’ve been together probably a little over three years now, and they went from a concept to flying this vehicle in that period of time, which is the first time this has been done by a human spaceflight team in a long time.”
Referring to the weather, which was the only issue of the day, Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley said, “We were ready when Mother Nature was ready, and we took our opportunity and what a great outcome. We’re very proud of the result.”
“It was a spectacular day,” said Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager. “The vehicle flew even better than we expected.”
NASASpaceflight.com reports that the booster may have encountered at least problems during the brief flight:
Ares I-X has launched on the second attempt at 11:30am Eastern, and although the First Stage and the Upper Stage Simulator (USS) appeared to recontact after separation – managers are claiming the flight to be a success. Sources also claim one of the FS’ parachutes failed, with the booster splashing down with two working parachutes.
Updates as they become available.
4 responses to “NASA Declares Ares I-X a Success; Report of Problems With Staging, Parachute”
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It’s kind of funny how they still call this a success, because all they did was fly the same SRB they’ve been flying for about 20-30 years now with a different nose cone.
And it didn’t even work well with that shiny new nose cone anyway, if the recontact event is confirmed.
Agreed, Nickolai-
Ares 1X flew – good. Can we cancel the rest of the Ares 1 program now?
Build the Jupiter 2.0 – heavy lift and flying th 3 years instead of Ares V flying in…ummm, I dunno, someday…maybe? PLus – same pad, same toling, same handling fixturing, same jobs that people who are supporting the shuttle have now.
New info I’m getting from people of the NASAspaceflight forums says that the recontact (even if confirmed) is not a big deal, since the real Ares-1 is using a different separation system.
So…. NASA just had a successful test firing of a 4-segment SRB! OMG congratulations guys! We did it[again]!
NASA Successfully Tests Parachute for Ares Rocket … The Ares drogue parachute successfully extracted the main parachute, which enabled the recovery of the 50,000-pound test drop.