NASA

The Ares rockets that will take over for the space shuttle and carry humans to the moon are closer to lifting off from the drawing board.

Designs and modifications are under way at Launch Pad 39B, the Launch Control Center and the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to accommodate the first test flight of an Ares I rocket in April 2009.

The Vehicle Assembly Building will stack the Ares rockets and Orion capsules. It is a familiar role for the building. It did the same work for the Saturn V moon rockets and the space shuttles. The Ares I rocket will be assembled in high bay 3.

At the same time, workers in Kennedy's Assembly and Refurbishment Facility and Parachute Refurbishment Facility are working on the components for the first launch test.

It is all part of a plan to use rockets based largely on technology proven in the Space Shuttle Program as the foundation for America's next generation of crewed spacecraft. One rocket, the Ares I, will pick up where the shuttle leaves off as America's prime vehicle for launching humans. The other, Ares V, will launch everything else needed for trips to the moon.

The demonstration rocket for the 2009 test, Ares I-X, will look just like the rocket that will launch astronauts to the International Space Station in the next decade and on the first leg of trips to the moon beginning in 2020.

The test flight calls for a surplus shuttle solid rocket booster to be topped with an inactive fifth segment, a non-working upper stage and a boilerplate capsule built to the dimensions of the Orion spacecraft that will carry humans to Earth orbit.

But for the 2009 test flight, the capsule will carry only instruments and will launch on a ballistic trajectory into the South Atlantic Ocean. This will allow engineers to study the conditions Ares I will experience at liftoff, while the solid rocket is thundering toward space and when the second-stage rocket and spacecraft separate.

A second unmanned test flight with higher fidelity upper stage and Orion spacecraft simulators are planned for 2012. The first crewed flight of Ares I and Orion is scheduled for no later than 2015.

Although the rocket is a new design, NASA is following a plan that allows the agency to use many facilities that already exist.

"The infrastructure we have for shuttle is mainly what we're going to use," said Pepper Phillips, manager of Kennedy's Ground Operations Project in the Constellation Program.

Constellation encompasses the Ares rockets and the Orion capsules under development, as well as the lunar landers and surface systems that will be used by astronauts exploring the moon.

Click the link below for some exciting video feeds from NASA-KSC:

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countdown/video/video90.html