The Ares V was to launch the Earth Departure Stage and Altair lunar lander for NASA's return to the Moon, which was planned for 2019.

In the 1996 book The Case for Mars, author Robert Zubrin discussed a possible future heavy launch vehicle named Ares.

Development of the rocket and its Earth departure stage was led by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

NASA's Ames Research Center was responsible for the Ares V integrated health management system and for developing its payload shroud.

It would be a significant increase in dimension and performance over the Hubble Space Telescope and the Ares V vehicle was expected to carry this to its destination in a single launch.

[13] The Augustine Commission concluded that "under the FY 2010 funding profile, the Committee estimates that Ares V will not be available until the late 2020s".

Under the Artemis program, the vehicle will transport crew to the Moon in the Orion spacecraft as well as logistics equipment and cargo for surface missions.

[26] Like the Space Shuttle, the Ares vehicle was to use a pair of solid-fuel first-stage rocket boosters that burn simultaneously with the liquid-fueled core stage.

[30] Besides its lunar role,[3] it could also support a crewed Orion expedition to a Near-Earth asteroid, and could boost an 8 to 16-meter successor of the Hubble Space Telescope to the Sun-Earth L2 point.

[32] NASA had considered using Ares IV to evaluate high-speed "skip" reentry profiles of the Orion capsule in 2007.

[34] Ares V Lite was an alternative launch vehicle for NASA's Constellation program suggested by the Augustine Commission.

[37] In the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness, a desktop model of the Ares V rocket was set decoration in the office of Admiral Alexander Marcus as part of his spaceflight collection.

[38] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.