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Music

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From NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, I'm George Diller.

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The doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building opened for a new rocket design for the first time in almost 30

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years as NASA debuted the Ares I-X flight test rocket on Oct. 20.

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Riding atop one of the crawler-transporters that carried Saturn V rockets and space shuttles to their launch

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pads, the tall, thin flight test vehicle began a 4.2-mile journey to Launch Pad 39B at 1:39 a.m.

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About 7 1/2 hours later, at 9:17 a.m., the mobile launcher platform was secured on a pedestal at the launch pad.

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The pad, which has hosted dozens of shuttle launches, was modified recently to handle the I-X. At 327 feet,

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the new rocket is significantly taller than a shuttle stack, which measures 184 feet when standing for liftoff.

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The Ares I-X is a one-of-a-kind craft designed to test the first stage of NASA's new rocket. It carries a

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simulated upper stage and spacecraft, along with hundreds of sensors.

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The flight test is expected to return enough data to tell engineers how the rocket behaves during the first

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minutes of flight.

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That data will be used to help design rockets for future exploration.

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From Kennedy Space Center, I'm George Diller.