NASA UPDADTES: Lift-off for new NASA rocket

NASA took a major step forward on October 28 in its plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020 with the victorious launch of a next generation space rocket.

After some delays, the Ares I-X, the tallest rocket forever built, blasted off at 11:30 am (1530 GMT) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, hauling with it the US space agency's lofty ambitions for human space flight.

The rocket is the prototype of the Ares I, designed to take a new capsule-shaped crew module called the Orion into low-orbit as a result it can embark on future missions to the International Space Station, the Moon, and further than.

"The flight test lasted about 6 minutes from its launch from the recently modified Launch Pad 39B until splashdown of the rocket's booster stage almost 150 miles (240 kilometers) downrange," added a NASA statement.

The most important part of the 327-foot (100-meter) rocket separated off from a simulated upper stage and Orion crew module prior to splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean to round of applause in a relieved and excited NASA control room.

"It is the most beautiful rocket launch I have ever seen," added NASA program director Jeff Hanley. "I get tears in my eyes. It was extremely special."

More than 700 sensors must provide engineers with essential data for fine-tuning the design of the rocket that with Orion is proposed to replace NASA's aging fleet of space shuttles, which is due to be retired in the year 2010.

"This is a massive step forward for NASA's exploration goals," added associate administrator Doug Cooke at NASA headquarters in Washington.

"Ares I-X provides NASA with a huge amount of data that will be used to advance the design along with safety of the next generation of American spaceflight vehicles -- vehicles that may again take humans beyond low Earth orbit."

Ares as well as Orion are part of Constellation, NASA's grand program to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020, and then possibly to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

The shuttle will be retired next year, however the Ares I will not enter into service until 2015 at the earliest. In the short-term, NASA will have to rely on Russia to put US astronauts into space, at a heavy price too.

The Orion is initially being designed to take a team of up to six astronauts on flights to the International Space Station, or else four on lunar missions of up to 210 days.

Instead of landing back like a plane, as the shuttle does, it will come back to Earth with the use of parachutes, more or less like the Apollo modules that took Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon more than 40 years in the past.

Sitting atop the Ares rocket, NASA has incorporated a launch abort system in the design to enable the capsule to jettison out of harm's way must something go wrong?

The test flight comes at a critical time as the White House is considering a report ordered by President Barack Obama's administration that raises concerns about the entire Constellation project.

The commission which was chaired by Norman Augustine, a former executive at aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, completed that the program "appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory" and was looking for goals not matched by its resources.

The Ares rocket has suffered most important development problems and its price tag has fueled criticism of NASA, an agency notorious for its cost overruns.

The early budget for the Constellation program was set at 28 billion dollars, but has swollen to as a minimum 44 billion.

NASA's yearly budget is about 18 billion dollars, 10 billion of which is being plowed in to the human space flight program, mostly in developing the Ares and the Orion.

The Augustine Commission said an additional three billion dollars a year was required for NASA to meet Constellation program goals or take human space flight the further step away from the existing International Space Station.

The commission proposed some alternatives and that includes sidestepping the rocket and going straight toward the Ares V family of launch vehicles, which would take astronauts back to the Moon and lastly on to Mars.