Ares 1-X to Roll to Launch Pad 39-B Tonight

UPDATE: The Ares 1-X is scheduled to roll to Launch Pad 39-B (vid tour) TUESDAY beginning at 12:01 AM for a new dawn of spaceflight. The rocket will be televised on the seven-hour roll-out and launch on NASA-TV. More from Reuters.

The launch control team at the NASA Kennedy Space Center will commence the final launch campaign preperations with the mobile crawler literally rolling out the new Ares I-X rocket on October 20 at midnight from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to launch pad 39B for the countdown to a Tuesday, October 27 launch between 8:00 – 12:00 EDT.

The Ares 1-x flight may help determine the next program of human spaceflight that the American space industry will be asked to undertake by President Barrack Obama and Washington Congressional policymakers.

If the Ares booster continues to have the space agency leadership support, it may well boost the Orion crew capsule that will carry the next American astronauts to orbit around the Moon. The United States first put humans in orbit around the Moon in 1968 and has not returned them to lunar orbit in more than thirty-seven years. No other nation has placed humans around the Moon.