Nasa tests Mars rocket
Updated on 27 October 2009
A new era of space exploration will begin when the Ares I rocket blasts off in Florida.
The rocket is designed to be the long-term successor to the space shuttle and it is likely to be the first vehicle to carry astronauts to the surface of Mars.
The flight will only last two minutes and costs $445m (£271m) with a single booster rocket parachuting into the Atlantic.
Mission manager Bob Ess said: "The vehicle is ready
to go. We have done all that we possibly could at this point in time but we
do want to remind everyone this is a test flight and this is not a human flight
so we don't have the level of redundancy or the depth of analysis in some areas
that we could do for being a first time flight.
"There are a lot of unknowns which is the reason why we are doing the test. So, no guarantees.
"We have high confidence. We have done a lot of work but we think we are ready to go from a vehicle point of view and the whole plan is to learn from it and we know that we will."
Nasa was planning the first manned Ares flight in 2015 but a panel of independent experts recently claimed that will be postponed until 2017.
The rockets are likely to carry astronauts back to the moon to establish a permanent base there before any missions to Mars.
