In the last twelve months, Alliant Techsystems has completed several significant milestones for NASA's Constellation program that will set the stage for major flight and ground tests in 2009. The company successfully conducted sub-scale and full- scale ground tests of Constellation components.

It successfully concluded thrust oscillation testing, and developed hardware that will be critical to the development phase of the program. And importantly, it developed and delivered flight hardware to the Kennedy Space Center for this July's Ares 1-X flight test.

"The past 12 months has been a historical year for ATK as we successfully completed many firsts in the development of Ares I and the launch abort system for Orion," said Mike Kahn, ATK Launch Systems Executive Vice President and General Manager. "We look forward to continuing this outstanding progress in 2009, moving us closer to an operational program for Ares I."

During the past year ATK successfully conducted:

+ Five major ground tests including two shuttle booster motor ground tests, which collected data for Ares I

+ A separation test for Ares I-X

+ A full-scale launch abort motor test for the Orion crew exploration vehicle

These tests were in preparation for Pad Abort-1 and Ares I-X flight tests, as well as the ground test of the first five-segment motor for Ares I - all scheduled to be performed this year.

ATK also successfully completed the Stage 1 Preliminary Design Review (PDR) on Ares I, leading toward product development and manufacturing of the first five-segment Developmental Motor (DM-1) that will be tested this fall.

Major hardware was also completed and delivered to Florida for this year's Ares I-X flight test, including the new forward skirt extension and forward skirt.

ATK also completed numerous Ares Stage I recovery tests with the new parachutes that will be used on the Ares 1-X flight test. Finally, the solid rocket segments have been prepared for instrumentation and will be shipped to Kennedy Space Center in February in preparation for integration in the spring.