Wed, Jan 18, 2006
MD Power Outage To Blame This Time
Sources at NASA have told Aero-News Wednesday's scheduled launch
of the New Horizons spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,
FL, has been postponed for a second (seventh?) time, pending resolution of
a weather-related power outage at the spacecraft mission operations
center in Maryland.
Mission managers are expected to determine Wednesday afternoon
whether to proceed toward Thursday's launch opportunity, which runs
from 1:08 pm. to 3:07 pm. EST.
Severe storms in the Baltimore-Washington area knocked out power
in several locations, including the campus of the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, where the New
Horizons spacecraft will be operated in flight. With primary power
out the New Horizons mission operations center was on backup power,
but New Horizons mission managers wanted to have sufficient backup
to those systems in place before conducting critical launch and
early flight operations.
The move also allows
strong winds and storms expected in Titusville, FL Wednesday to
dissipate -- and at the moment, the forecast for Thursday
calls for Florida sunshine, and winds well within the acceptable
limits to launch the Atlas V rocket.
The New Horizons launch window extends through February 14,
although a launch before February 2 is preferred to allow the
spacecraft to "slingshot" off of Jupiter's graviational field,
cutting two years off the trip to the farthest reaches of the Solar
System.
As the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moon Charon, New
Horizons looks to unlock one of the solar system's last, great
planetary secrets. After launch aboard an Atlas V, the New Horizons
spacecraft will cross the entire span of the solar system and
conduct flyby studies of Pluto and its moon, Charon, in 2015. The
seven science instruments on the piano-sized probe will shed light
on the bodies' surface properties, geology, interior makeup and
atmospheres.
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