Cleveland — NASA’s Glenn Research Center has scheduled outreach events in select cities along the Ohio River beginning with a stop in Evansville, Ind., in advance of the shipment of hardware for NASA’s Ares I-X test flight vehicle.

The upper stage simulator of Ares I-X, designed and built by Glenn Research Center engineers and technicians, is bound for the Kennedy Space Center in Fla. After a 12-day journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and into the Gulf of Mexico, the parts will arrive at Port Canaveral, Fla. where they will be assembled for launch in 2009.

NASA’s “Journey to Tomorrow” traveling exhibit housed in a 53-foot-long trailer will be on display at the Evansville Museum and will give visitors an interactive understanding of our nation’s space program. Visitors will have an opportunity to watch the Ares 1-X launch animation video and walk through a full-size inflatable Orion crew exploration vehicle.

There are also interactive workstations which include glove box activities, where visitors will be able to manipulate their environments and explore an actual moon rock from the Apollo 17 lunar landing.

Additionally, visitors can experience a planetary gravity demonstrator and a solar system scale where they discover how much they would weigh on each of the planets.

The exhibit will be open on Saturday, Oct. 4, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EDT., and Sunday, Oct. 5, noon – 5 p.m. EDT.

Ares I-X will be the first test flight vehicle of NASA’s next generation launch vehicle system. The Constellation Program is building American’s next spacecraft in order to return to the moon, establish an outpost there and eventually move beyond to Mars and other destinations in the solar system. Constellation includes the Orion crew exploration vehicle, the Ares launch rockets and the Altair lunar lander. The first flight of Orion to the International Space Station is scheduled for no later than 2015, with the first lunar mission occurring no later than 2020.

Touring the trailer takes approximately 10 minutes. The exhibit is wheelchair accessible and admission is free.

After Evansville, the Constellation exhibit will travel to Steubenville, Cincinnati and Marietta in Ohio.

For more information, visit:

http://exploration.nasa.gov

For more information about Glenn, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/glenn

For more information about Evansville Museum, visit:

http://www.emuseum.org/