UPDATED:
The NASA Ares I-X rocket was launched successfully at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The unmanned rocket is a prototype for one that could return astronauts to the moon. The launch was postponed from Tuesday because of bad weather.
The 327-foot rocket — taller than the Statue of Liberty — roared into the blue Florida sky and then curled slowly back to earth.
Recovery ships waited for the rocket’s booster section as it fell under a parachute into the Atlantic Ocean. The top sections were only mock-ups and will not be recovered.
Though only a test flight, the two-minute launch took several years of planning and marked the first time in 28 years that a rocket took off from Canaveral. Ares is connected to NASA’s Constellation project, which would replace its space shuttle program.
Agency officials hope to gain valuable information from the $445 million launch, largely from roughly 700 sensors aboard Ares, which went about 28 miles into the atmosphere.
The launch was delayed three and a half hours because of bad weather.
NASA says Ares will be ready by 2015 to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. However, a report submitted last week to President Obama from the U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee found the project is too expensive and such a voyage could not occur until 2017. In August, a report to NASA from Aerospace Corp., a federally funded research-and-development group, also concluded the project was underfunded.
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