Ares I-X Successfully Launches

(Pictures from here.)


Yesterday, the Ares I-X successfully launched, reached its target height, separated and hit the water. The Ares I-X site is here. If you watch the video at separation the "second stage" (A dummy) bent backwards. There were some issues. Recontact appears to have happend on separation. One of the parachutes failed. A fairly good analysis is here. Recontact is a potentially catastrophic problem. I don't know if the recontact was a product of a dummy second stage or something more sinister. Staging issues are discussed here. From the video (on the main site above. Hi res here.), it looked like the second stage folded back on the first stage.

But, by and large, a successful test flight of the first stage. There were a lot of concerns over vibration, etc., of the first stage. Now we have real data to evaluate those concerns.
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