The Space Shot

After months of tests and analysis, engineers plan to beam commands to NASA's Spirit Mars rover Monday, kicking off a long-awaited attempt to free the hardy craft from the talcum powder-like soil of a hidden crater that trapped it last April.

"Spirit's facing the most challenging situation it's seen yet on the surface of Mars," Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars exploration program, said Thursday. "We know a lot of people around the world...view Spirit with great affection, exploring the Red Planet along with it, experiencing the excitement, seeing new and exciting vistas, seeing new landscapes, uncovering some incredible new knowledge about our sister planet.

The view from the Spirit rover looking north, back along its path, from the point where it got trapped last April. The rover is believed to be straddling the rim of a hidden crater. Note the front-left wheel, nearly buried in powdery soil.

(Credit: NASA)

"I'd like everybody to be hopeful, but I'd also like them to be realistic," he said. "If Spirit cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, it's likely that this lonely spot, straddling the edge of this crater, might be where Spirit ends its adventures on Mars."

Designed to operate for just three months on the frigid surface of Mars, Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, have been exploring opposite sides of the planet since early 2004, collecting data in concert with orbiting spacecraft to help scientists understand the role of water in the Martian environment.

Chalking up a steady stream of discoveries over the past five years, the unexpectedly long-lived rovers are held in high esteem by the scientists and engineers who drive them across the surface of Mars and eagerly await the data they send back.

"In many ways, we think of these rovers kind of as our children that we've sent off into the world way too early," said Ashley Stroupe, a rover driver at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And like most parents, when their kids go off to college, we can't reach out to help them every time they really need us. So it really is a bond, not just between us and the rover, but also the team has become a very close family as well."

Last April 23, the six-wheel Spirit was slowly rolling backward on the western side of a feature known as "Home Plate," heading toward the south and a pair of volcanic structures that scientists wanted to examine. The rover was driving backward because its right front wheel stopped working in 2006.

The ground to the south of Spirit looked normal, but as it rolled along, its wheels broke through an upper-crust-like layer of soil and into a softer, unseen material.

"Essentially, the rover was driving on what we call a dirt crust," said John Callas, the project manager of the Mars exploration rovers at JPL. "It was a hard surface that we broke through, and underneath this material, camouflaged underneath, was this loose, fine material where the rover is challenged right now."

Scientists later determined that Spirit's path was straddling the rim of an ancient, 26-foot-wide crater just beneath the surface. The crater was filled in with sulfate sands that formed layers with different compositions.

Initial attempts to drive out in a crablike fashion by turning the front and back wheels in the same direction only made matters worse.

Pictures from navigation cameras on the rover show its forward and rear wheels almost buried in the soil, their treads caked with a powdery coating that reduces traction. Even worse, photographs show a pyramid-shape rock sticking up from the soil directly below Spirit's body that threatens to rub against the belly, possibly lodging in an indentation. If the rock ends up bearing any of the weight of the rover, traction could be reduced even more.

A view under the Spirit rover showing a pyramid-shape rock close to the belly of the robot.

(Credit: NASA)

NASA managers decided to halt any additional attempts to free Spirit until engineers could complete a thorough analysis using a full-scale mockup and simulated Martian soil.

"Unfortunately, Spirit may have met its match in this one," McCuistion said. "We will see if we can get it out of this talcum powder-type soil that laid beneath a seemingly innocuous surface crust that we broke through...The rover teams have been working very hard since April, they've been testing, strategizing, analyzing, and modeling to figure a way out. We even called experts in soil mechanics and mechanical systems in to try to help us understand the environment. But there's only so much you can do on Earth to simulate Mars."

Late Monday, commands will be uplinked to Spirit in an attempt to drive north, back along the furrows its wheels dug as the rover moved into the sand trap last April. Engineers will find out how the move went on Tuesday. No one expects a quick extraction, and engineers said it likely will take weeks or months to either free the rover or determine that it can't be done.

A mockup of the Spirit rover in a "sand box" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where engineers have been testing techniques for driving the vehicle out of loose soil.

(Credit: NASA)

"Our best plan at this point is to try to drive forward, retracing our steps as we drove in," Stroupe said. "And we believe this is our best plan for several reasons. One is that we believe this softer material may be easier to plow through than trying to break through the crust and cut new tracks. So if we follow our old tracks out, we may be able to make better progress.

"We have very little ground clearance under the vehicle. Wheel turns cause us to sink further into this material, and there is no guarantee that any plan we come up with will succeed in extricating the vehicle," she said. "This is going to clearly be a very long process, to either get to extrication or perhaps even to determine if extraction is going to work."

The team's progress will be assessed in February. Depending on the success or failure of the work at that point, NASA could opt to continue with additional attempts or decide to call it off. Even in that worst-case scenario, scientists could still use Spirit's instruments to study nearby rocks and soil, and to monitor the martian weather.

But Stroupe hopes it won't come to that.

"I think a lot of us, while we're waiting for that plan to execute (Monday), will not get a lot of sleep," she said. "But regardless of the outcome, none of us can have anything but primarily positive emotions about this mission. It's been such an incredible experience, we've come so far beyond what we thought we would accomplish...We're so proud of them, and we're so thrilled to have been part of this project. It will be sad to see them go. But we're not ready to let go yet, and we don't plan to let go yet. We still have a lot of work to do."

Ongoing analysis of the trajectory of a piece of space junk that was believed to pose a possible threat to the International Space Station showed the debris would not pass close enough to the lab complex to force the crew to seek refuge in their Soyuz lifeboats, a NASA official said late Friday.

An agency spokesman said the station's six-member crew would be awakened early, at 10 p.m. EST as planned, but the astronauts would be told to go back to bed and not to press ahead with a tentative plan to shelter in place aboard the station's Soyuz ferry craft.

A graphic representation of debris in low-Earth orbit, defined as "the region of space within 2,000 km of the Earth's surface."

(Credit: NASA)

Earlier Friday, NASA flight controllers predicted the debris, of unknown origin, could pass within about six-tenths of a mile of the space station at 10:48 p.m., toward the end of the crew's normal sleep period. During the evening planning conference Friday afternoon, the astronauts were told to plan on getting up early so they could make their way to the Soyuz lifeboats by around 10:30 p.m. if necessary.

"The ballistics are saying they are looking at conjunction with space debris," Russian mission control radioed. "As you know, this is something we are prepared for. In the past, we have performed avoidance maneuvers, but this time maneuvering away from the path of the debris is not an option.

"Because we cannot perform avoidance maneuver, you will have to ingress Soyuz vehicles. Both Soyuz crews should be in their vehicles. This is what we have. We are going to work on the ballistics data to get greater precision, but right now we are in the red box. The probability of collision is non zero."

NASA flight controllers told the astronauts the tracking data was uncertain and that engineers did not yet have confidence in the trajectory projections. Pending additional analysis later in the afternoon, the crew was told to play it safe and plan on boarding the Soyuz lifeboats after shutting internal hatches in the U.S. segment of the lab complex.

After additional analysis, however, flight controllers concluded the unidentified debris would not pose a threat to the station, according to a NASA spokesman.

Last March, the station's three-man crew - Mike Fincke, Yury Lonchakov and Sandra Magnus - faced a similar situation and briefly took refuge in the lab's single Soyuz ferry craft when another piece of debris from an old rocket motor made a close approach.

There are more than 18,000 pieces of space junk in low-Earth orbit the size of a baseball and larger. U.S. Strategic Command prioritizes radar tracking to protect manned spacecraft first, followed by high-priority military and civilian payloads.

NASA monitors an imaginary volume around the space station roughly the shape of a pizza box measuring 0.466 miles thick and 15.5 miles square.

"Initially, we have a screening box, which is .75 kilometers radial miss, which would be up or down, by 25 kilometers in cross track, which would be left or right, by 25 kilometers down track, which is either in front or behind us," space station Flight Director Ron Spencer said in September.

"Space Command will alert us of any debris objects out there that are going to get that close to us. Then they increase tasking on those objects to try to get a better solution and decrease the uncertainty. Then we calculate a probability of collision based on the data Space Command gives us."

Spencer said NASA has two levels of concern.

"We have two thresholds, yellow and red," he wrote in an email exchange. "The yellow is 1-in-100,000 and the red is 1-in-10,000. We will not take any action if it is below the yellow threshold. If it between the yellow and red, we will only take action if it is easy to do so without impacting the mission. For a red threshold violation we will take action in most cases."

Updated at 6:45 p.m. EST: NASA officials say analysis shows the space debris in question poses no serious threat to the International Space Station.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--A preliminary look at data from NASA's Ares I-X test flight Wednesday shows the towering rocket performed as well or better than computer modeling predicted during the climb out of the dense lower atmosphere, a senior NASA manager said Friday.

One of three huge parachutes failed to inflate during the spent booster's descent to the Atlantic Ocean and a second chute only inflated halfway, resulting in a hard splash down that caused the rocket's case to buckle.

NASA's Ares I-X rocket blasts off from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. Engineers say data from the test flight shows the booster met or exceeded predictions from computer modeling.

(Credit: NASA)

But Mission Manager Bob Ess said the parachute system, flying for the first time, was designed for NASA's planned Ares 1 rocket, which is 15 percent lighter than the test version, and that engineers will have plenty of time to correct whatever went wrong.

"No one is concerned about it," Ess said. "In fact, the parachute guys were ecstatic, was their words, (about) the information they got from this flight. They really wanted to test this out."

The Ares I-X rocket was designed to match the characteristics of NASA's planned shuttle replacement, the more powerful Ares I. The test version featured a four-segment shuttle booster, a dummy fifth segment housing guidance and control equipment and an unpowered mockup of the rocket's upper stage and crew capsule.

The 327-foot-tall test rocket was launched Wednesday from shuttle complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. The major goals of the unmanned six-minute flight were to collect engineering data on how the tall, slender rocket flew through the lower atmosphere, how the structure responded to aerodynamic and acoustic forces and how the new parachute system, scaled for the planned Ares I, performed.

During the initial seconds of flight, the rocket's nozzle moved 1 degree as planned to help the booster "walk off" the pad, preventing its hot exhaust plume from hitting the upper sections of the shuttle service gantry. As expected, the plume caused minor damage to the lower sections of the gantry, but Ess said that would not be a problem for the new service tower that will be used for Ares rockets.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running a day late, NASA launched its 33-story Ares I-X rocket on a $445 million unmanned test flight Wednesday, a spectacular six-minute sub-orbital mission to collect data needed for the design of NASA's proposed shuttle replacement.

"Oh, man! Well, how impressive is that?" Program Manager Jeff Hanley told the launch team after the spent rocket fell back to the Atlantic Ocean. "I hope you appreciate that you've accomplished a great step forward for exploration."

Said Launch Director Ed Mango: "Think about what we just did. Our first flight test, and the only thing we're waiting on is weather. That says you all did frickin' fantastic! So thank you very much."

Vapor clouds form around NASA's unmanned Ares I-X rocket as it accelerates through the region of maximum aerodynamic pressure less than a minute after liftoff Tuesday.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now)

The 327-foot-tall unmanned rocket roared to life at 11:30 a.m. EDT and majestically climbed away from launch complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center atop a torrent of 5,000-degree flame and a cloud of churning exhaust.

Liftoff came three-and-a-half hours behind schedule because of overnight thunderstorms and nearby lightning strikes that required unplanned tests, along with cloudy weather that posed a risk of static charge buildups that could have interfered with communications.

The weather went in and out of limits all morning, but a break in the cloud cover gave Mango the window he needed to come out of a hold at the T-minus four-minute mark and proceed on to launch.

When the countdown hit zero, four massive hold-down bolts exploded, the booster's load of solid propellant ignited and the rocket began climbing away.

An instant after booster ignition, the rocket's nozzle moved slightly to steer the Ares I-X away from the gantry, preventing the hot exhaust from hitting launch pad structures. The maneuver was apparent to the unaided eye and the rocket stayed well away from the gantry.

Using a four-segment space shuttle solid-fuel booster as the first stage and a dummy upper stage simulator, the unusual-looking rocket - the tallest launcher since NASA's huge Saturn 5 moon rocket - cleared the gantry in about six seconds and then soared away to the East.

The Ares I-X rocket blasts off from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now)

It was the first launching in NASA's post-Columbia Constellation program, which calls for development of manned and unmanned Ares rockets, Orion crew capsules and landers designed to support Antarctica-style moon bases in the 2020s.

But the Obama administration is re-evaluating NASA's manned space program and whether it makes sense to return to the moon while assessing a report from an independent panel of experts that concluded NASA did not have enough money to carry out the Constellation program.

The panel suggested it would make more sense to abandon the Ares I rocket in favor of rockets and crew capsules provide by private industry on a commercial basis. Under that approach, NASA could focus on development of the heavy lift rockets needed to carry astronauts to a variety of deep-space targets.

Given the political uncertainty in Washington, it's unclear if the Ares I rocket that Tuesday's test flight was designed to support will ever actually fly.

But NASA managers and engineers were elated to get the huge test rocket off the ground and the towering booster lived up to expectations, putting on a spectacular show for space center workers, area residents, and tourists.

"Vindication really does not describe it well," Hanley said after the flight. "It's a sense of validation that the course that we had laid out is executable. An early demonstration like this puts aside any doubt in our minds, if we had them, as to the flyability of this particular design.

"We have a design that will do the country service, if it is put into service," he said. "The performance of the vehicle was very pleasing, to put it mildly."

Twenty seconds after liftoff, the rocket reached its maximum thrust of 3.16 million pounds of push with an internal pressure of 895 pounds per square inch.

The flight plan called for the rocket's nozzle to move back and forth 0.12 degrees 34 seconds after liftoff in a "programmed test input" to collect data on the stiffness of the vehicle and how it responded to dynamic changes.

The results of the nozzle deflections were too subtle to be visible to the unaided eye and the rocket appeared to stay solidly on course as it accelerated through the sound barrier 39 seconds after liftoff.

Long-range tracking cameras showed the rocket making only slight rolling motions about its long axis as small roll control rockets fired to maintain the proper orientation. Roll control was a question mark early on in the rocket's development, but engineers said it was not a problem in flight.

Another "programmed test input" - moving the nozzle by 0.12 degrees - presumably began at 55 seconds into flight. Five seconds after that, the Ares I-X was expected to experience maximum dynamic pressure of 850 pounds per square foot, subjecting the booster to the greatest stress it would experience in flight.

A 0.35 degree programmed test input was planned for 75 seconds into flight with a final 1-degree side-to-side yaw maneuver scheduled for 93.6 seconds.

The rocket accelerated to a peak velocity of about 4.5 times the speed of sound, reaching an altitude of 25.2 miles. At that point, when the rocket's thrust fell to less than 40,000 pounds of push, an explosive charge fired to separate the first stage from the dummy upper stage.

A wide-angle shot of the Ares I-X rocket climbing away through a partly cloudy sky.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now)

An instant later, eight upward-firing rockets at the base of the booster ignited to back the first stage away from the second, a maneuver clearly visible in long-range tracking camera views.

But in a departure from the expected flight program, the dummy second stage went into a flat tumble as it continued along its ballistic trajectory instead of maintaining a nose-forward orientation. The dummy upper stage rose to a maximum altitude of about 150,000 feet before arcing over and plunging back to Earth 150 miles east of the space center.

In a final major test, three 150-foot-wide parachutes were designed to deploy to lower the spent first-stage booster casing to the Atlantic Ocean where a NASA recovery ship was standing by to tow it back to Port Canaveral. A camera on the rocket showed a smaller drogue parachute deployed, but video stopped moments later and the main chutes were not seen.

But the recovery ship quickly located the booster and a NASA spokesman said the crew of an aircraft flying over the floating rocket later said all three parachutes were visible in the water. An initial assessment, sources said, indicated normal blistering on the rocket and a dent of unknown origin in the aft segment.

"We completely met our success criteria, in fact we blew them away," said Mission Manager Bob Ess. "The first one was to roll out (to the launch pad), obviously we did that one. Clear the pad, we did that without a problem. Fly the intended flight path, we certainly did that, we confirmed that. And the last one was to learn from the flight.

"So far, we're on a path to learn a lot. The separation seemed a little different than we predicted as far as how the upper stage reacted after separation. So right there's an opportunity for us to jump in and figure out what was different in the actual flight from our models. So, hugely successful."

It will take engineers several weeks to complete a quick-look analysis of data from more than 700 sensors that measured pressures, stresses, temperatures, and other factors throughout the flight. But the initial results indicated no major problems.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Launch of NASA's Ares I-X rocket on a planned $445 million test flight was delayed 24 hours Tuesday because of bad weather and an errant freighter that briefly strayed into the off-shore danger area.

"For everyone, great job today. You gave it a great shot," Launch Director Ed Mango told the team. "We had some opportunities and just couldn't get there, weather didn't cooperate. But good work today."

The Ares I-X rocket atop pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center during launch preparations.

(Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)

Launch was rescheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday. Forecasters are predicting a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather during a four-hour launch window, with lighter winds and less cloud cover. It is not yet clear whether Thursday is an option if additional problems force another delay Wednesday.

NASA began Tuesday's launch campaign at 1 a.m. EDT with the start of a seven-hour countdown. With forecasters concerned about high clouds, showers, and friction-induced static charge buildups, NASA passed up the 8 a.m. opening of the window and the countdown remained in an extended hold at the T-minus four-minute mark in hopes conditions would improve.

In a bit of a surprise given a 60 percent "no-go" forecast, conditions improved and NASA was preparing to come out of the hold and proceed to launch when a freighter strayed into the launch danger zone.

The ship was contacted and immediately began moving out of the area. NASA reset launch for 10:49 a.m., but the delay caused by the freighter held things up long enough for clouds to move in. Two minutes and 37 seconds before liftoff, weather officer Kathy Winters ordered a hold.

The countdown was recycled back to T-minus four minutes and holding in hopes conditions would improve.

Throughout the morning, clouds rolled over the Kennedy Space Center from the west and while occasional breaks were seen on radar, the timing didn't work out for NASA. Around 11:20 a.m., launch managers called off the attempt.

"It looks like we're not going to get there with weather on these opportunities and per our discussions, I guess we're looking for your recommendations and what you would like us to implement from a launch perspective," Test Director Jeff Spaulding said to Mango.

"Your team has done outstanding getting the vehicle ready," Mango said. "Weather (officer) has been outstanding in trying to help us. We're not going to be go today. So we can set up for a scrub."

There are no technical issues with the Ares I-X rocket. But in attempting to launch Tuesday, engineers pulled a sock-like cover from an air data probe at the very tip of the rocket that is designed to measure the atmospheric conditions ahead of the launcher.

Because of the booster's height, and the need to use a shuttle launch pad with a gantry that is much shorter than the rocket, the cover had to be removed by technicians, atop the pad's service gantry, manually pulling a long lanyard. The protective cover hung up at the base of the probe, but the technicians were able to pull it free after a few minutes of energetic tugging.

The cover cannot be re-installed. If rain water gets into the probe between now and launch, it could prevent accurate readings. NASA managers said earlier that was an acceptable condition and that the data, while desirable, was not required for launch.

Editor's note: A 4,000-word mission preview is available on the CBS News Space Place Breaking News page.

Amid work to ready NASA's Ares I-X rocket for a long-awaited test flight next week, a presidential panel charged with reviewing the nation's manned space program submitted its completed report Thursday, concluding NASA's planned shuttle replacement will cost too much and take too long to build to be a viable option.

Even so, panel members said they looked forward to the $445 million test flight Tuesday and the data it will generate to help validate computer models and processes that will be useful in any future rocket design efforts.

"We do think it's appropriate to fly the Ares I-X," said Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and chairman of the U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee. "We think there are important things to be learned that will help the program."

Norman Augustine, left, chairman of a presidential review of manned space options, and panel member Edward Crawley, right, brief reporters Thursday.

(Credit: NASA)

The panel's completed report contained no major surprises--an executive summary was released in late September that included the same five basic options for future manned space activity--but the coincidental timing of the report and next week's test flight highlighted the uncertain future of NASA's plans to replace the space shuttle and return to the moon.

"The premier conclusion of the committee is the human spaceflight program the United States is currently pursuing is one that's on an unsustainable trajectory," said Augustine. "We say that because of a mismatch between the scope of the program and the funds to support the program. That's of great concern to us because human spaceflight, where safety accounts for everything, is a very unforgiving sort of pursuit."

In the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, the Bush administration ordered NASA to finish the International Space Station and retire the shuttle by the end of 2010, and to develop new rockets and spacecraft to return astronauts to the moon by the early 2020s.

The plan NASA developed--the Constellation program--calls for a new rocket known as the Ares I, and an Apollo-like crew capsule called Orion, to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. A large, unmanned heavy lift rocket known as the Ares V then would be built to launch Orion capsules and lunar landers to the moon.

President Obama expressed general support for the Constellation program during the presidential campaign, but earlier this year he ordered an independent review of NASA's manned space program in the context of the current budget environment. At the same time, the Office of Management and Budget cut some $3 billion from NASA's projected "out-years" budget, money earmarked for development of the Ares V.

Against that uncertain backdrop, NASA pressed ahead with development of the Orion capsule and the Ares I booster envisioned as a replacement for the space shuttle. The new rocket features an extended shuttle solid-fuel booster, a hydrogen-fueled upper stage and an escape rocket that could pull the crew capsule to safety in an emergency.

NASA plans to launch a test version of the rocket Tuesday on a sub-orbital flight to verify computer models being developed to help design the Ares I. For the test flight, a standard four-segment shuttle booster is being used, along with a dummy upper stage and an Orion capsule simulator that duplicate the mass and shape of the Ares I rocket.

"We've reviewed the Ares I and Orion elements of that program, which are the two parts that are principally underway," Augustine said Thursday. "We found those programs to be reasonably well managed, we found them to have technical problems of a nature that's probably not uncommon for complex undertakings of this type.

"It's our belief that given ample time and funds, the engineers at NASA and their contractors are certainly capable of solving those problems. So we think the program within itself has a very good likelihood of succeeding. The issue that comes up under Ares I is whether the program is useful when it has succeeded because of a mismatch of the time schedules and the costs with what will be needed for it to do."

While that observation suggests Augustine and the panel do not support continued development of Ares I, panel member Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut, said "it's important to emphasize that we were presenting options, not recommendations."

"Despite what's been going on in the blogosphere, the panel didn't come up saying (NASA) should cancel Ares I, which a lot of people think we actually did," he said in a telephone interview. "It's really up to the decision makers as to which path to go down. So Ares I is not dead by a long shot."

NASA believes the Ares I could be ready to fly by 2015. The Augustine panel concluded it would take until at least 2017 to complete the work, coming on line too late to provide more than token support to the International Space Station. In the meantime, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets, at $50 million per ticket, to get U.S. astronauts to and from the lab complex.

The Augustine report also concluded that NASA will be unable to extend human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit without additional funding, suggesting an additional $3 billion per year, plus a hedge against inflation, to fund a realistic space exploration program.

The panel did not make recommendations, but members seem to favor a commercially developed launch system to get astronauts to low-Earth orbit and a government-developed heavy lift rocket to extend human exploration to the moon and beyond.

The so-called "flexible path" option presented by the Augustine panel would allow NASA to launch orbital moon missions and even flights around Mars or to its moons by the early to mid 2020s, while long-term development of landers and associated hardware is developed in parallel.

"The current plan focuses on going to the moon (with) the longer term goal of going to Mars," Augustine said. "There are a lot of things one could do along the way that are very interesting, that let you build up gradually to the immense undertaking of the Mars program.

"The sort of thing we're thinking of, one could fly circumlunar missions, you could circumnavigate Mars, you could land on an asteroid, a near-Earth object, you could land on Phobos or Deimos, the martian moons, and do some very exciting science from there. It seems to us that is a more sensible program than to wait 15 years or so for the first major event."

A White House spokesman thanked the panel for its report, saying "the president has on numerous occasions confirmed his commitment to human space exploration, and the goal of ensuring that the nation is on a vigorous and sustainable path to achieving our boldest aspirations in space."

"Against a backdrop of serious challenges with the existing program, the Augustine committee has offered several key findings and a range of options for how the nation might improve its future human space flight activities," he said. "We will be reviewing the committee's analysis, and then ultimately the president will be making the final decisions."

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--NASA's towering Ares I-X rocket was hauled to the launch pad early Tuesday for blastoff October 27 on a $445 million unmanned test flight that likely will play a major role in the ongoing debate about NASA's post-shuttle manned space program.

The slow trip to pad 39B began at 1:39 a.m. EDT Tuesday when a powerful crawler-transporter carrying the Ares I-X rocket and its mobile launch platform slowly pulled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Powerful spotlights illuminated the vehicle as it emerged from the VAB, providing a spectacular view of the slender white rocket against the dark of a cloudy night.

The Ares I-X rocket begins the slow trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch pad 39B for work to ready the booster for launch Oct. 27.

(Credit: Justin Ray/Spaceflight Now)

The tip of the 327-foot-tall rocket, anchored to the mobile launch platform by four massive bolts at the base of the booster's flared aft skirt, was expected to sway back and forth up to a foot during rollout, depending on the wind and other factors. But data from sensors measuring stresses on the four hold-down posts indicated the rocket was stiffer than computer models suggested and the booster was mounted atop pad 39B without incident by 9:17 a.m.

"This is great, this is huge," said Bob Ess, the Ares I-X mission manager. "This is a milestone that's been in our planning for years, rollout to the pad. It's hard to believe it's here. We've been doing this for three-and-a-half, four years and there it is, all done. It's ready to fly."

Liftoff is targeted for 8 a.m. on October 27. Backup opportunities are available October 28 and 29 if needed.

The Ares I rocket is a key element in NASA's post-shuttle Constellation program, which calls for replacing the iconic orbiters with a safer, lower-cost rocket to ferry astronauts to low-Earth orbit and development of a large, unmanned heavy lift rocket - the Ares V - that would support eventual expeditions to the moon.

The Obama administration currently is reassessing NASA's manned space program and evaluating five options developed by an independent panel of space experts led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. Only one of the five options includes the Ares I. But in recent hearings, lawmakers expressed reluctance to scrap the Constellation architecture and it's not yet clear what action the Obama administration might take, or when a decision will be made.

Given that backdrop in the policy arena, the planned test flight of the Ares I-X could prove critical to the future of the Constellation program. While a success would not guarantee a continuation of Constellation, a failure could prove fatal.

"You can't avoid that," former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who oversaw the implementation of the Constellation program, said in an interview. "Now, I'll say right on the heels of that remark I think that's regrettable. You don't hinge decision making on one test flight. I mean, that's not good engineering. But I think it's unavoidable that policy makers will look to the success or failure of this flight as a key to future decisions."

The 1.8-million-pound Ares I-X rocket is made up of a four-segment shuttle solid-fuel booster, a dummy fifth segment, a dummy second stage, and a mockup of an Orion crew capsule and escape rocket. More than 700 sensors are mounted on the rocket to determine actual performance and the stresses the vehicle experiences, along with three television cameras.

NASA's Ares I-X rocket is moved into position atop pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center.

(Credit: William Harwood)

Like any shuttle booster, the Ares I-X will fire for two minutes, boosting the vehicle to an altitude of about 130,000 feet and a velocity of nearly five times the speed of sound. At that point, roughly 43 miles due east of the Kennedy Space Center, the first stage will separate from the dummy upper stage and fall to the Atlantic Ocean in a test of new parachutes designed for the operational Ares I. The dummy upper stage, which will not be recovered, will crash into the ocean some 147 miles from the space center.

The cost of the Ares I-X project, including the rocket, launch pad modifications, computer modeling and data analysis, is expected to be around $445 million.

"We're incredibly excited to be on the cusp of flying the system, seeing what Ares I can do," Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told CBS News.

The goals of the test flight are to verify computer models and flight characteristics during the critical first two minutes of flight when aerodynamic stresses are most severe.

While the real Ares I rocket features a first-stage booster with five fuel segments, engineers say the four-segment Ares I-X vehicle will closely mimic the flying characteristics of the manned version.

Engineers are especially interested in the acoustic environment a few seconds after launch, when the reflected sound of the accelerating booster hits the vehicle, causing vibrations that will be transmitted through the structure, and later, when the rocket accelerates through the speed of sound and then experiences maximum dynamic pressure, or "max Q."

A space shuttle typically experiences between 720 and 750 pounds per square foot at max Q, but Ares 1-X will experience around 850 psf. Data from the test flight will tell engineers what sort of environmental conditions sensitive electronics might be subjected to and whether mitigations are needed.

Other areas of interest are longitudinal thrust oscillations and how much the vehicle rolls about its long axis.

Based on data from recent shuttle flights and the test firing of a five-segment Ares booster in Utah, Hanley said engineers do not believe thrust oscillation, a phenomenon that occurs toward the end of a booster's firing, is a major problem. Even so, current plans for the Ares I rocket call for springs, part of a passive "soft-ride" system, to be used between the first and second stages and between the second stage and the Orion crew capsule to damp out any significant vibrations.

Engineers also are studying an innovative system that would use the mass of the second-stage liquid oxygen in an eventual manned rocket to damp out unwanted vibration.

Roll control also doesn't appear to be a major issue, engineers say. All solid-fuel rockets experience some amount of roll due to the behavior of the high-speed exhaust plume and Ares I-X is equipped with roll control thrusters on the dummy second stage to counteract any unwanted motion.

Another issue involves the rocket's sideways drift as it climbs away from the launch pad. For the Ares I-X launch, the booster's nozzle will be canted slightly just after ignition to ensure a "walk-off" away from the launch pad gantry. This is not intended to prevent a crash into the tower, which engineers say is not a concern. Rather, it is to prevent the rocket's exhaust plume from damaging the pad if the launch-day winds push it toward the gantry.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying commander Gennady Padalka, flight engineer Michael Barratt, and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté undocked from the International Space Station on Saturday and plunged to a successful landing in Kazakhstan early Sunday.

Descending under a big orange-and-white parachute, the Soyuz TMA-14's descent module settled to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown at 12:32 a.m. EDT (10:32 a.m. local time) Sunday to close out a 50-minute descent from orbit. Russian recovery forces, including U.S. and Russian flight surgeons, monitored the final stages of the descent before moving in to provide assistance, opening the capsule's hatch within about six minutes.

A few minutes after that, video from the landing site showed the crew members resting comfortably in chairs draped with blankets, with Laliberté wearing his familiar red clown nose. Padalka could be seen enjoying an apple as he and Barratt chatted with support personnel.

The Soyuz TMA-14 crew after landing Sunday. Left to right: Guy Laliberté, wearing a red clown nose, commander Gennady Padalka, and flight engineer Michael Barratt.

(Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)

For Padalka and Barratt, launched March 26, touchdown closed out a marathon 199-day stay in orbit that was highlighted by the expansion of the crew from three to six astronauts and cosmonauts. Padalka, veteran of a flight to the old Mir space station and two expeditions aboard the ISS, boosted his spaceflight total to 586 days, putting him sixth on the list of most experienced space fliers.

Laliberté, a Canadian billionaire, is believed to have paid around $35 million to spend nine days aboard the station as a tourist. He took off September 30 with cosmonaut Maxim Suraev and NASA flight engineer Jeffrey Williams, who remained behind aboard the station as part of the six-member Expedition 21 crew.

Padalka, Barratt, and Laliberté undocked from the space station's Pirs airlock module at 9:07 p.m. Saturday. Padalka made the trip back to Earth strapped into the central descent module's center seat with Barratt, serving as flight engineer, to his left and Laliberté to his right.

"Gennady, good luck," Suraev radioed from the station as the Soyuz pulled away. "You look wonderful against the backdrop of black space. It's amazing, I don't have enough words."

"You'll do great, I just know it," Padalka replied.

"Good luck to all of you," Suraev said. "Stay safe, have a nominal landing. I hope you do well after you get back and I hope you'll be running later today, once you're on the ground."

"OK, well Max, we wish you a great time aboard the station," Padalka said. "We'll see you sometime in spring. And by the way, call me if you have any questions, because I know you will."

The Soyuz TMA-14's braking rockets fired on time at 11:40 p.m. for about four minutes and 24 seconds, slowing the ship by about 258 mph to drop it out of orbit.

The lower propulsion module and the upper orbital module separated from the central descent module just after midnight, about three minutes before the components fall into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 64 miles. The separation sequence went smoothly, setting up a normal descent to the planned landing site as opposed to a steeper "ballistic" trajectory.

Landing near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, was uneventful, although a brisk wind pulled the craft over on its side after touchdown.

The Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft descending toward touchdown in Kazakhstan.

(Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)

In an interview with CBS News last week, Barratt said he was looking forward to a reunion with his wife and five children.

"I'm really going to miss the station," he said. "Just floating and flying here are tremendous and I would say after six-and-a-half months up here, I can now float and fly fairly proficiently. It's takes a little bit of time to really adapt to this, what my friend Shannon Lucid would call 'deep adaptation' to space flight, it really does take some time and I think I've finally gotten there.

"The Earth views are just amazing, I'm going to miss those. As much as anything, I'm going to miss the time around the galley table with this crew. We really worked well together and had a lot of fun. But the big magnet on the ground, of course, is my family. I have a wonderful, crazy family that I've really missed a lot that I'm looking forward to getting back to them."

Asked about re-adaptation to gravity after an extended stay in weightlessness, Barratt, a flight surgeon, said a new resistive exercise machine had helped him stay in shape.

"I'm in about as good shape as I can be up here," he said. "We've got a new resistive exercise machine which I've been working on fairly diligently for the last six-and-a-half months and it's the first time we've really had that kind of loading in space. We have the treadmill, of course, and the bike and I've tried to hit every session of exercise I can and I think I'm about as good as I can be.

"I'm not a young guy anymore and there are certainly some challenges associated with re-entry and getting back to the gravity vector. But I'm certainly going to give it my best shot and hopefully go through it OK and as always, try to take meticulous notes about it."

Padalka was replaced as commander of the space station by European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne. His crew, known as Expedition 21, includes Suraev, Williams, NASA astronaut Nicole Stott, cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk.

"Our mission was very, very long and very productive and, I would say, very eventful," Padalka said last week. "The main goal of our mission was six-person crew, which was started up in June...Right now, we are ready to go home, and I hope space station will be left in a great operational condition for the next commander and the next crew."

Romanenko, Thirsk, and De Winne were launched to the station on May 27. Stott was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery Aug. 28 and she plans to return to Earth in November with the crew of the shuttle Atlantis. De Winne, Thirsk, and Romanenko are scheduled to come home Dec. 1, briefly leaving the station with just two crew members: Williams, serving as commander of Expedition 22, and Suraev. Three fresh crew members--cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, astronaut Timothy Creamer, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi--are scheduled for launch December 21.

In a brute-force search for ice on the moon, an empty 5,000-pound rocket stage traveling twice as fast as a rifle bullet crashed into a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole Friday, presumably blasting out tons of debris for examination by an instrumented probe that carried out its own kamikaze plunge four minutes later.

While the initial impact at 4:31 a.m. PDT did not prove especially dramatic--it was not even visible in real-time video from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)--scientists said a camera sensitive to temperature variations clearly recorded the flash of the Centaur rocket's catastrophic crash.

Three successively zoomed-in views showing the impact of a Centaur rocket stage in a dark crater on the moon as viewed by NASA's LCROSS probe minutes before its own destruction.

(Credit: NASA)

More important, spectroscopic data indicated the presence of material of some sort above or near the impact point in a murky crater known as Cabeus, and instruments aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter observed the Centaur crater and confirmed a plume of debris. But it was not immediately clear how extensive the plume was or how much material was blasted out.

Principal investigator Anthony Colaprete said it would take several days to analyze the data from the $79 million LCROSS experiment and reach a consensus on whether or not water ice was, or was not, detected.

"Life is full of surprises, we want to be careful and not make a false negative or a false positive claim," he told reporters after the impact. "I'm excited we saw variations in the spectra because that means we saw something, and it was not just blackness. The information's there, we just need to get to it."

Asked if he had seen anything in the initial data to indicate the presence of ice, Colaprete said he had not yet had time to look for the telltale signals.

"We're going to take our time and build up a case for water in the ejecta, if it's there, or a case against it if it's not there," he said. "And then understand if we're seeing variations, what do these variations mean? We've got to understand that before we say anything."

Interestingly, a closeup of the thermal flash of the Centaur impact showed an elongated smear of light and not a concentrated flare as one might expect from a near straight-in impact. Colaprete said his team would look into what that might mean. Topographic data collected by other satellites indicated a relatively flat floor where the impact occurred.

LCROSS was launched June 18 as a companion payload to NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Working in a 31-mile-high orbit, LRO is designed to create a high-resolution map of the moon's surface to help identify sites for future manned missions.

It also will measure the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face, and map out the surface topology, mineralogy, and chemical composition of Earth's nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites, followed by three years of purely scientific observations.

While LRO was launched directly to the moon by a powerful Atlas 5 rocket, LCROSS and the booster's empty Centaur upper stage were sent into a looping four-month orbit back around the Earth.

The spacecraft was designed to aim itself and the attached Centaur stage back at the moon, targeting a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. Mission managers initially selected a crater known as Cabeus A, but after additional analysis of topographic data, the target was switched to nearby Cabeus, a crater measuring some 62 miles across and about 2.5 miles deep.

LCROSS successfully separated from the Centaur stage at 9:50 p.m. Thursday and then rotated 180 degrees to aim its instruments forward. A small rocket firing slowed LCROSS to ensure the proper four-minute separation from the Centaur.

Analysis of telemetry indicated the trajectory was right on the money--the Centaur is believed to have hit the surface within about 210 feet of the planned target--and LCROSS presumably flew through an ejecta cloud of some sort.

"Everything really worked out well," Colaprete said earlier. "The spacecraft flew perfectly, the instruments performed, honestly, better than expected in some cases. We got interesting results. But again, these are just initial results...I can certainly report there was an impact, we saw the impact, we saw the crater and we got good measurements, spectroscopic measurements, which is what we needed of the impact event.

"So we have the data we need to actually address the questions we set out to address."

The search for water ice on the moon is one of the holy grails of modern lunar exploration. Data from other spacecraft, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, show the presence of hydrogen, possibly from water ice, in the top three feet or so of lunar soil. Scientists initially believed ice from comets could be expected primarily in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's poles, but more recent data indicated the presence of trace amounts over broad regions.

"It could be water, it could be methane, it could be hydrocarbons or organics," Colaprete said during a pre-impact briefing. "From a scientific standpoint, this is incredibly important. Whatever the moon has collected over the last 3.5 billion years in terms of water, organics, materials from comets, asteroids, the sun, could be trapped in these pockets on the moon. It's a time capsule, it's a window into the past of the entire inner solar system, of Earth."

Finding ice on the moon could be critical to future exploration or even colonization. With unlimited solar power, ice can be converted into water, oxygen, and hydrogen rocket fuel. Finding ice on the moon also would raise the possibility of similar deposits in similar environments across the solar system.

"Water in terms of exploration is very important," Colaprete said. "Even if we don't go back to the moon, it is a principle resource throughout the solar system. On Mars and beyond. The old Mars mantra was 'follow the water.' And really, that extends in my mind through the entire solar system and the entire universe. And so really, LRO and LCROSS are the first directed, focused steps in that direction on the moon."