Photo © Ben Cooper/LaunchPhotography.com
Used with permission.

Another fantastic launch photo by Ben Cooper at LaunchPhotography.com, this time of last month’s suborbital test flight of the Ares I-X rocket (should I put that in quotes?) — see the whole series of launch photos here. I picked this shot because the rocket is actually breaking the sound barrier, forming a shockwave (sheath-like thing.)

A new rocket stands in the Vehicle Assembly Building — the Ares I-X:

Standing tall at its fully assembled height of 327 feet, the Ares I-X is one of the largest rockets ever processed in the Vehicle Assembly Building’s High Bay 3, Super Stack 5 at the Kennedy Space Center.

Ares I-X rivals the height of the Apollo Program’s 364-foot-tall Saturn V. Five super stacks make up the rocket’s upper stage that is integrated with the four-segment solid rocket booster first stage. Ares I-X is the test vehicle for the Ares I, which is part of the Constellation Program to return humans to the moon and beyond.

The Ares I-X flight test currently is targeted for Oct. 31.
Image Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis

The Apollo-era Dynamic Test Stand at Marshall Space Flight Center is about to see use again: for the testing of Ares I, part of NASA’s Constellation program of post-shuttle spaceflight. NASA shows the then and now, in photos, of which the above is one:

Beginning in 1978, the space shuttle Enterprise was hoisted into Marshall’s Dynamic Test Stand for vertical ground vibration testing in a launch configuration. (NASA/MSFC)

I was always quite fond of Space Shuttle Enterprise (which never flew in space, but was used for testing), as it guards the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, where Space Camp (and Academy, for older kids) is held. I spent two glorious summers in the Alabama heat, under the shadow of Enterprise, atop an external tank and two un-fuel-filled SRBs. (The first summer I was there, in 1994, the ET underside was coated in pennies — the foam is soft enough that they stick, edge-on. The next summer they’d recoated it, boo.)