A shuttle hurtling into space on the back of a rocket could be, hmmm, a little dangerous. You’re traveling at several miles a second on what is essentially a massive bomb. What’s more this bomb has never actually been fully tested before: those being propelled by it are the guinea pigs.

This is the situation that faces the crew of the Orbit shuttle when it is propelled by the Ares rocket as part of NASA’s Constellation program.

The secret, as far as is possible, is to review and test individual parts and combinations of parts as much as possible. NASA’s testing regime for the Ares rocket involved 1,100 specialists in based in Huntsville, Alabama at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. These specialists have just completed the initial design review successfully. Now the rounds of iterative change and adjustment begin. The testing process will finish sometime shortly before the 2015 launch deadline for the project. Ares is a big bomb; NASA have to make sure it’s going to do exactly what they expect it to.

Constellation, Ares and Orbit are a hugely exciting prospect for NASA, and this movement on Ares is the first critical milestone in more than 35 years of a U.S. rocket responsible for carrying astronauts into space.

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