CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA’s Ares I-X test rocket lifted off at 11:30
a.m. EDT Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a
two-minute powered flight. The test flight lasted about six minutes
from its launch from the newly modified Launch Complex 39B until
splash down of the rocket’s booster stage nearly 150 miles down
range.

“This is a huge step forward for NASA’s exploration goals,” said Doug
Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Ares I-X provides
NASA with an enormous amount of data that will be used to improve the
design and safety of the next generation of American spaceflight
vehicles — vehicles that could again take humans beyond low Earth
orbit.”

The 327-foot tall Ares I-X test vehicle produced 2.6 million pounds of
thrust to accelerate the rocket to nearly 3 g’s and Mach 4.76, just
shy of hypersonic speed. It capped its easterly flight at a
suborbital altitude of 150,000 feet after the separation of its first
stage, a four-segment solid rocket booster.

Parachutes deployed for recovery of the booster and the solid rocket
motor will be recovered at sea for later inspection. The simulated
upper stage, Orion crew module, and launch abort system will not be
recovered.

“The most valuable learning is through experience and observation,”
said Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager. “Tests such as this — from
paper to flight — are vital in gaining a deeper understanding of the
vehicle, from design to development.”

Wednesday’s flight offered an early opportunity to test and prove
hardware, facilities, and ground operations - important data for
future space vehicles. During the flight, a range of performance data
was relayed to the ground and also stored in the onboard flight data
recorder. The 700 sensors mounted on the vehicle provide flight test
engineering data to correlate with computer models and analysis. The
rocket’s sensors gathered information in several areas, including
assembly and launch operations, separation of the vehicle’s first and
second stages, controllability and aerodynamics, the re-entry and
recovery of the first stage and new vehicle design techniques.

The Ares I-X efforts are led by the Ares I-X mission management office
of the Constellation Program, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in
Houston, and NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in
Washington. NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland designed and
built the vehicle’s upper stage mass simulator. NASA’s Langley
Research Center in Hampton, Va., provided aerodynamic
characterization, flight test vehicle integration and the crew
module/launch abort system mass simulator. NASA’s Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., with contractor support, provided
management for the development of Ares I-X avionics, roll control,
and first stage systems. The Kennedy Space Center provided operations
and associated ground activities and launch operations.

Contractors for Ares I-X include Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, of Salt
Lake City for the first stage solid rocket booster and Teledyne Brown
Engineering of Huntsville for the roll control system. Jacobs
Engineering of Tullahoma, Tenn., supported by Lockheed Martin of
Denver, provided the avionics systems. United Space Alliance of
Houston and ATK Launch Systems support the ground systems and launch
operations.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA has completed a review of the Ares I-X development rocket’s readiness for its flight test and selected Tuesday, Oct. 27, as the official launch date. Liftoff is scheduled for 8 a.m. EDT from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Ares I-X launch date was announced after a flight test readiness review at Kennedy. During the meeting, senior NASA and contractor managers assessed the risks associated with the test and determined the rocket, support systems and procedures are ready for launch.

“I am proud of the work this team has done to ready this test rocket for launch,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. “This is the first time in more than 30 years that NASA has built a vehicle in a new configuration so this has been a valuable learning experience.

“This test will yield important data to support the nation’s next steps in exploration. There is no substitute for hard data - flight testing clarifies the distinction between imagined outcomes and real flight experience.”

The 28-mile high, two-minute flight of the Ares I-X, an uncrewed development rocket, will provide NASA with an opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities and ground operations, while gathering critical data for the Ares I rocket and future launch vehicles.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — For the first time in more than a quarter century, a new vehicle is sitting at Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Ares I-X flight test vehicle arrived at the pad atop of a giant crawler-transporter at approximately 7:45 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

The crawler-transporter left Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building at 1:39 a.m., traveling less than 1 mph during the 4.2-mile journey. The rocket was secured on the launch pad at 9:17 a.m.

The vehicle is scheduled to launch at 8 a.m. on Oct. 27. This test flight of the Ares I-X rocket will provide NASA an early opportunity to test and prove hardware, models, facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares I launch vehicle.

The Ares I rocket is being designed to carry astronauts to space in the Orion crew exploration vehicle. The Ares I-X test flight also will allow NASA to gather critical data during ascent of the vehicle’s integrated stack, which includes the Ares I with a simulated upper stage, Orion and launch abort system. Data collected from more than 700 sensors throughout the rocket will begin to confirm the vehicle as a whole is safe and stable in flight before astronauts begin traveling into orbit.

“With the arrival of Ares I-X at the pad, this milestone demonstrates NASA’s world-class ability to conceptually design, build and process a new launch vehicle in just under four years,” said Bob Ess, mission manager for Ares I-X at Kennedy. “Nearly 2,000 NASA and contractor employees located throughout the United States worked together in an unprecedented fashion, resulting in the new vehicle ready for flight.”

During the week before launch, technicians at the pad will perform a variety of electrical and mechanical checks to ready the vehicle for flight, including hydraulic power unit hot fire, steering tests and internal power verifications using flight batteries.

United Space Alliance of Houston is NASA’s prime contractor for the ground processing of the Ares I-X rocket.

“Processing for the Ares I-X test flight in parallel with space shuttle operations has been a true challenge involving people and hardware from across the country, and we’re very proud of what the team has accomplished,” said Mark Nappi, vice president of Launch and Recovery Systems for United Space Alliance.

ATK Space Systems of Magna, Utah, is NASA’s prime contractor for the first stage of the rocket.

“The NASA and contractor teamwork displayed over the last four years has been the catalyst that brought us to this important milestone today,” said Bob Herman, ATK’s vice president of Exploration Systems for Kennedy Space Center Operations. “As the Ares I first stage provider, we are looking forward to receiving invaluable data during the flight test.”

At the Flight Test Readiness Review on Oct. 23, mission managers will finalize the launch date and provide the team with a final “go” or “no go” for launch.

Ares I-X is an un-crewed, sub-orbital development test in a modified Ares I configuration. Ares I-X is the first developmental flight test of the Constellation Program, which includes the Ares I and V rockets, Orion and the Altair lunar lander.

To follow Ares I-X on Twitter, visit: http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Ares_I_X.

For information about Ares I-X, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aresIX.

WASHINGTON — NASA is targeting Nov. 16 for the launch of space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-129 mission from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 4-day delay will accommodate the space agency’s efforts to launch the first Ares I-X mission later this month.

Managers for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate and Exploration Systems Mission Directorate met Monday and decided to adjust Atlantis’ target launch date to optimize the agency’s ability to launch both Ares I-X and Atlantis before the end of the year. The same launch team at Kennedy is supporting both the shuttle and the flight test of the Ares I-X rocket, which is targeted to lift off on Oct. 27. Ares I-X is scheduled to roll out to its launch pad at 12:01 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

Atlantis’ new target launch date will give Ares I-X launch opportunities Oct. 27, 28 and 29. NASA has yet to schedule Atlantis’ new target liftoff date on the Eastern Range.

The change to Atlantis’ targeted launch will affect the launch countdown dress rehearsal for the shuttle’s six astronauts. The astronauts arrived at Kennedy on Monday for the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test and related training. The simulated countdown has been rescheduled to Nov. 3. The astronauts will practice emergency escape and other related training while they are at Kennedy this week and return there Nov. 2 to conclude their rehearsal work.

Atlantis had been targeted for a Nov. 12 liftoff.

The agency’s Flight Readiness Review meeting for STS-129 is set for Oct. 29. NASA will schedule an official launch date for Atlantis following that meeting.

For more information about the STS-129 mission and its crew, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA is poised for the rollout of the Ares I-X rocket to Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first motion of the Ares I-X out of Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building is targeted for 12:01 a.m. EDT, on Tuesday, Oct. 20. The 4.2-mile journey is expected to last about seven hours.

Live NASA Television coverage with commentary will start at 11:45 p.m., Oct. 19, and 7 a.m., Oct. 20. Video highlights of the move will air on NASA Television’s Video File.

The rollout of Ares I-X originally was set for Monday, Oct. 19. During testing on Oct. 14, engineers detected a nitrogen gas leak in an accumulator located in the aft skirt of the rocket. The accumulator, which absorbs hydraulic pressure spikes as the system operates, was replaced and successfully retested. Management is assessing what effect, if any, this delayed rollout will have on the targeted Oct. 27 launch date.

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. — NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, created twin impacts on the moon’s surface early Friday in a search for water ice. Scientists will analyze data from the spacecraft’s instruments to assess whether water ice is present.

The satellite traveled 5.6 million miles during an historic 113-day mission that ended in the Cabeus crater, a permanently shadowed region near the moon’s south pole. The spacecraft was launched June 18 as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“The LCROSS science instruments worked exceedingly well and returned a wealth of data that will greatly improve our understanding of our closest celestial neighbor,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS principal investigator and project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “The team is excited to dive into data.”

In preparation for impact, LCROSS and its spent Centaur upper stage rocket separated about 54,000 miles above the surface of the moon on Thursday at approximately 6:50 p.m. PDT.

Moving at a speed of more than 1.5 miles per second, the Centaur hit the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. Oct. 9, creating an impact that instruments aboard LCROSS observed for approximately four minutes. LCROSS then impacted the surface at approximately 4:36 a.m.

“This is a great day for science and exploration,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The LCROSS data should prove to be an impressive addition to the tremendous leaps in knowledge about the moon that have been achieved in recent weeks. I want to congratulate the LCROSS team for their tremendous achievement in development of this low cost spacecraft and for their perseverance through a number of difficult technical and operational challenges.”

Other observatories reported capturing both impacts. The data will be shared with the LCROSS science team for analysis. The LCROSS team expects it to take several weeks of analysis before it can make a definitive assessment of the presence or absence of water ice.

“I am very proud of the success of this LCROSS mission team,” said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames. “Whenever this team would hit a roadblock, it conceived a clever work-around allowing us to push forward with a successful mission.”

The images and video collected by the amateur astronomer community and the public also will be used to enhance our knowledge about the moon.

“One of the early goals of the mission was to get as many people to look at the LCROSS impacts in as many ways possible, and we succeeded,” said Jennifer Heldmann, Ames’ coordinator of the LCROSS observation campaign. “The amount of corroborated information that can be pulled out of this one event is fascinating.”

“It has been an incredible journey since LCROSS was selected in April 2006,” said Andrews. “The LCROSS Project faced a very ambitious schedule and an uncommonly small budget for a mission of this size. LCROSS could be a model for how small robotic missions are executed. This is truly big science on a small budget.”

For more information about the LCROSS mission, including images and video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/lcross.

WASHINGTON — Astronomers declared NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory with the release Wednesday of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., unveiled the images at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Topping the list of new views are colorful, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie “pillar of creation,” and a “butterfly” nebula. Hubble’s suite of new instruments allows it to study the universe across a wide swath of the light spectrum, from ultraviolet all the way to near-infrared. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to probe the cosmic-web structure of the universe and map the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life as we know it.

“This marks a new beginning for Hubble,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade.”

“I fought for the Hubble repair mission because Hubble is the people’s telescope,” said Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. “I also fought for Hubble because it constantly rewrites the science textbooks. It has more discoveries than any other science mission. Hubble is our greatest example of our astronauts working together with scientists to show American leadership and ingenuity. I want to salute Team Hubble — everyone who worked on Hubble from the Goddard Space Flight Center and Space Telescope Science Institute scientists in Maryland, to the ground crew at the Kennedy Space Center, to the Johnson Space Center where the astronauts train, and to the astronauts who were heroes in space.”

The new instruments are more sensitive to light and, therefore, will improve Hubble’s observing efficiency significantly. It is able to complete observations in a fraction of the time that was needed with prior generations of Hubble instruments. The space observatory today is significantly more powerful than it ever has been.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the quality of the images from the new Wide Field Camera 3 and repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys, and the spectra from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph,” said Keith Noll, leader of a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which planned the early release observations. “The targets we’ve selected to showcase the telescope reveal the great range of capabilities in our newly upgraded Hubble.”

These results are compelling evidence of the success of the STS-125 servicing mission in May, which has brought the space observatory to the apex of its scientific performance. Two new instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, were installed, and two others, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, were repaired at the circuit board level. Mission scientists also announced Wednesday that the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer was brought back into operation during the three months of calibration and testing.

“On this mission we wanted to replenish the ‘tool kit’ of Hubble instruments on which scientists around the world rely to carry out their cutting-edge research,” said David Leckrone, senior project scientist for Hubble at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Prior to this servicing mission, we had only three unique instrument channels still working, and today we have 13. I’m very proud to be able to say, ‘mission accomplished.’ ”

For the past three months, scientists and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Goddard have been focusing, testing, and calibrating the instruments. Hubble is one of the most complex space telescopes ever launched, and the Hubble servicing mission astronauts performed major surgery on the 19-year-old observatory’s multiple systems. This orbital verification phase was interrupted briefly July 19 to observe Jupiter in the aftermath of a collision with a suspected comet.

Hubble now enters a phase of full science observations. The demand for observing time will be intense. Observations will range from studying the population of Kuiper Belt objects at the fringe of our solar system to surveying the birth of planets around other stars and probing the composition and structure of extrasolar planet atmospheres. There are ambitious plans to take the deepest-ever near-infrared portrait of the universe to reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 500 million years old. Other planned observations will attempt to shed light on the behavior of dark energy, a repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. Goddard manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington, and is an International Year of Astronomy 2009 program partner.

For images and more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble.

NASA will unveil the first images from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope at 11 a.m. EDT today. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will provide live coverage from NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission upgraded the telescope in May with state-of-the-art science instruments, leaving it more powerful than ever and extending its life into the next decade.

Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator and pilot of space shuttle Discovery on the STS-31 mission that launched Hubble in 1990, will join U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., in the unveiling of the Hubble images during the 11 a.m. briefing. A panel of scientists then will discuss Hubble’s new and refurbished instruments and the images they produced.

A second briefing — in which the STS-125 astronauts will discuss how they enabled Hubble’s new capabilities during their historic servicing mission — immediately follows at noon.

Scott Altman commanded Atlantis’ crew, which included Pilot Gregory C. Johnson and Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Megan McArthur and Mike Massimino.

NASA’S KEPLER MISSION SPIES CHANGING PHASES IN A DISTANT WORLD

WASHINGTON — NASA’s new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope’s extraordinary scientific capabilities. The discovery was published Friday in the journal Science.

The find is based on a relatively short 10 days of test data collected before the official start of science operations. Kepler was launched March 6, 2009, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The observation demonstrates the extremely high precision of the measurements made by the telescope, even before its calibration and data analysis software were finished.

“As NASA’s first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a dramatic entrance on the planet-hunting scene,” said Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Detecting this planet’s atmosphere in just the first 10 days of data is only a taste of things to come. The planet hunt is on!”

Kepler team members say these new data indicate the mission is indeed capable of finding Earth-like planets, if they exist. Kepler will spend the next three-and-a-half years searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in a warm zone where there could be water. It will do this by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars, which occur when orbiting planets transit, or cross in front of, the stars.

“When the light curves from tens of thousands of stars were shown to the Kepler science team, everyone was awed; no one had ever seen such exquisitely detailed measurements of the light variations of so many different types of stars,” said William Borucki, the principal science investigator and lead author of the paper.

The observations were collected from a planet called HAT-P-7, known to transit a star located about 1,000 light years from Earth. The planet orbits the star in just 2.2 days and is 26 times closer than Earth is to the sun. Its orbit, combined with a mass somewhat larger than the planet Jupiter, classifies this planet as a “hot Jupiter.” It is so close to its star, the planet is as hot as the glowing red heating element on a stove.

The Kepler measurements show the transit from the previously detected HAT-P-7. However, these new measurements are so precise, they also show a smooth rise and fall of the light between transits caused by the changing phases of the planet, similar to those of our moon. This is a combination of both the light emitted from the planet and the light reflected off the planet. The smooth rise and fall of light is also punctuated by a small drop in light, called an occultation, exactly halfway between each transit. An occultation happens when a planet passes behind a star.

The new Kepler data can be used to study this hot Jupiter in unprecedented detail. The depth of the occultation and the shape and amplitude of the light curve show the planet has an atmosphere with a day-side temperature of about 4,310 degrees Fahrenheit. Little of this heat is carried to the cool night side. The occultation time compared to the main transit time shows the planet has a circular orbit. The discovery of light from this planet confirms the predictions by researchers and theoretical models that the emission would be detectable by Kepler.

This new discovery also demonstrates Kepler has the precision to find Earth-size planets. The observed brightness variation is just one and a half times what is expected for a transit caused by an Earth-sized planet. Although this is already the highest precision ever obtained for an observation of this star, Kepler will be even more precise after analysis software being developed for the mission is completed.

“This early result shows the Kepler detection system is performing right on the mark,” said David Koch, deputy principal investigator of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. “It bodes well for Kepler’s prospects to be able to detect Earth-size planets.”

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. Ames is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.

For images, animations and more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

WASHINGTON — A NASA panel that investigated the unsuccessful Feb. 24 launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, has completed its report.

NASA’s OCO satellite to study atmospheric carbon dioxide launched aboard a Taurus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Feb. 24 at 4:55 a.m. EST, but it failed to reach orbit.

The Mishap Investigation Board led by Rick Obenschain, deputy director at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., verified that the Taurus launch vehicle fairing failed to separate upon command. The fairing is a clamshell structure that encapsulates the satellite as it travels through the atmosphere. The failure to shed the fairing mass prevented the satellite from reaching its planned orbit and resulted in its destruction.

The board identified four potential causes that could have resulted in the fairing not separating:

* A failure of the frangible joint subsystem. A frangible joint is an explosive device that provides instantaneous separation of flight vehicle structures while maintaining confinement of explosive debris. * A failure in the electrical subsystem that prevented sufficient electrical current to initiate the required ordnance devices. * A failure in the pneumatic system, which supplies pressure to thrusters which separate the fairing. * A cord snagged on a frangible joint side rail nut plate.

The panel also provided recommendations to prevent any future problems associated with the four hardware components that could have caused the OCO accident.

The six-member board began its investigation in early March. The panel conducted hardware testing, performed and reviewed engineering analysis and simulation data, reviewed telemetry data, collected and secured more than 2,000 documents, and conducted 78 interviews of critical personnel associated with the mission.

The official report of the board contains information restricted by U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations and company sensitive proprietary information. As a result, the board has prepared a summary of its report, which provides an overview of publicly releasable findings and recommendations regarding the OCO mission failure. The summary is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/oco.