NASA’s Next Launch Vehicle

Last week, I traveled to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL, to see preparations for Ares 1-X, the first test flight for NASA’s next family of launch vehicles called Ares. These rockets will replace the aging space shuttles and will eventually return humans to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The purpose of Ares 1-X is to gather flight data for the design and development of Ares 1, which will fly in 2015.

Technology Review will feature the Ares 1-X mission (scheduled for August) in the July/August edition of the magazine. But I wanted to share a few amazing photos from my trip. I also got some shots of Space Shuttle Endeavour on the launch pad; it’s serving as a backup and potential rescue vehicle for the Atlantis launch scheduled for May 11–the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The three huge towers surrounding the launch pad are the lightning suppression system built for Ares.