NASA launches rocket to advance Moon dream

The Ares I-X, the tallest rocket ever built, blasted off at 11:30 a.m. (1530 GMT) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying with it the U.S. space agency's lofty ambitions for human space flight.

The rocket is the prototype of the Ares I, designed to carry a new capsule-shaped crew module called the Orion into low Earth orbit for missions to the International Space Station, the Moon and beyond.

Ares and Orion are part of Constellation, NASA's grand program to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020, and then perhaps to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

Although the shuttle is to be retired next year, the Ares I will not enter into service until 2015 at the earliest. In the interim, NASA will have to rely on Russia to put U.S. astronauts into space, at a hefty price, too.

The Orion is initially being designed to take a crew of up to six astronauts on flights to the International Space Station, or four on lunar missions of up to 210 days.

Instead of landing like a plane as the shuttle does, it will float back to Earth using parachutes, more like the Apollo module that took Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon more than 40 years ago.

The Orion perches atop the Ares rocket and NASA has incorporated a special launch abort system to enable the capsule to jettison out of harm's way should something go wrong.

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