NASA Tests, Test Sites & Launch Pads (15 Photos)

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The Ares I launch vehicle's first stage is a single, five-segment reusable solid rocket booster derived from the Space Shuttle Program's reusable solid rocket motor that burns a specially formulated and shaped solid propellant called polybutadiene acrylonitrile (PBAN). The second or upper stage will be propelled by a J-2X main engine fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. This HD video image depicts a test firing of a 40k subscale J2X injector at MSFC's test stand 115 on September 9th, 2007.

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On Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, equipment is set up to continue erecting new lightning towers on November 25th, 2008. Each of the three lightning towers will be 500 feet tall with an additional 100-foot fiberglass mast atop supporting a wire catenary system. This improved lightning protection system allows for the taller height of the Ares I compared to the space shuttle. Pad B will be the site of the first Ares vehicle launch.

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An aerial view of the newly erected lightning towers on Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The two towers at left and right contain the lightning mast on top; the one at center does not. At center are the fixed and rotating service structures that have previously served the Space Shuttle Program. In the foreground is the tower that holds 300,000 gallons of water used for sound suppression during a shuttle liftoff.

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Fog blankets the woods near a road in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The center shares a boundary with the refuge that includes salt-water estuaries, brackish marshes, hardwood hammocks and pine flatwoods.

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The dawn sky over NASA's Kennedy Space Center reveals the newly erected lightning towers on Launch Pad 39B.

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In this HD video image, the first stage reentry parachute drop test is conducted at the Yuma, Arizona proving ground on September 9th, 2007. The parachute tests demonstrated a three-stage deployment sequence that included the use of an Orbiter drag chute to properly stage the unfurling of the main chute. The parachute recovery system for Orion will be similar to the system used for Apollo command module landings and include two drogue, three pilot, and three main parachutes.

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The mock-up of the Orion crew capsule used during the test of the parachute system for the recovery system of the Orion spacecraft on July 31, 2008 was severely damaged when a test set-up chute failed to properly inflate and caused the parachute system to fail. The failed parachute - called a programmer chute - was supposed to get the test vehicle set up to the correct test conditions. (

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A full-scale rocket motor the Orion Crew Module Jettison Motor - fires at the Aerojet facility in Sacramento, Calif on July 18th, 2008. This test will help in the development of NASA's Orion jettison motor that is being designed to separate the spacecraft's launch abort system from the crew module during launch.

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"Nozzle side loads" are a major design consideration for rocket engine exhaust nozzles, and the J-2X engine is no exception. Side loads, or pressures exerted on the sides of the engine nozzle, are most severe during engine start as the rocket exhaust plume fills the nozzle, as well as at shutdown when the plume empties from the nozzle, pressing unevenly around the nozzle walls. Testing at the Marshall Center's Nozzle Test Facility enables Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne design engineers to characterize these side loads and apply this test data to computer analyses used to design the nozzle to withstand the side loads.

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A convoy of trucks passes a launch pad as it makes the journey from Port Canaveral to the Vehicle Assembly Building's high bay 4 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The trucks carry Ares I-X upper stage simulator segments, wrapped in blue protective plastic. The simulator comprises 11 segments that are approximately 18 feet in diameter. Most of the segments will be approximately 10 feet high, ranging in weight from 18,000 to 60,000 pounds, for a total of approximately 450,000 pounds.