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NASA cancels Ares I crew launch vehicle test study

Sun, 2008-04-06 14:36 — doug

NASA cancels Ares I crew launch vehicle test study - NASA has stopped a study it commissioned from the Aerospace Corporation that would have informed the US space agency’s flight test planning for the Ares I crew launch vehicle and its Orion crew exploration vehicle, but has been unable to explain why the work ceased.

According to an Aerospace source, the commissioned study, which took place in 2007, was being carried out simultaneously with an internal NASA report and dealt with the Constellation programme’s Ares I ground-test requirements.

Aerospace had been commissioned to carry out the study because in 2005 it had completed an assessment of past human spaceflight programmes for NASA, which concluded that the full-scale ground testing of launchers was key to flight-test successes in programmes from Mercury to the Space Shuttle. The follow-on ground-test requirement [Flight Global Spaceflight News]