After some delays because of weather concerns, the Ares 1-X was successfully launched from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center at 11:30 AM EST. At two minutes into the launch the first stage solid rocket booster separated from the simulated second stage, meant to mimic the size and mass of the second stage and the Orion space vehicle of a fully developed Ares 1 stack. The first stage continued on a controlled flight to a planned landing in the Atlantic Ocean on parachutes. The first stage will be retrieved by a NASA recovery ship and brought back for evaluation by NASA engineers.
The flight of the Ares 1-X is meant to test the flight characteristics of a launch vehicle that uses a solid rocket booster as a first stage. A number of sensors were included on the test vehicle to measure those flight characteristics. The test flight will contribute to the design of the planned Ares 1 launch vehicle should it be built. If Ares 1 is not built, the thinking is that the knowledge gained by the Ares 1-X is still useful, if only from the principle that no knowledge is useless knowledge.
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