Delta IV Preps On Track For Launch On Friday

A Delta IV rocket and a new national weather satellite are being readied for launch Friday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and mission managers already are keeping close tabs on the weather.

The United Launch Alliance rocket and its payload -- a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite -- are scheduled to blast off from Launch Complex 37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during a window that will extend from 6:14 p.m. to 7:14 p.m. Friday.

The weather forecast, however, calls for a 60-percent chance that seasonal summer thunderstorms might force a launch scrub.

A high-pressure ridge over the central continental United States and a weak boundary trough over the southeast and the Florida peninsula are expected to result in enough moisture in the atmosphere to generate late-afternoon and early-evening thunderstorms.

You can check of the details in this Official Forecast from the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron, which provides forecasting services for all launches from the air base and nearby Kennedy Space Center.

The forecast is similar to the one United Launch Alliance and NASA faced last Friday when stormy weather cleared just in time for an Atlas V rocket to set sail with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its piggyback payload -- the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

"We've got the whole thing over again in spades," said KSC spokesman George Diller. "The only good thing is we have a one-hour window, and that may be long enough to wait something out."

Technicians today are wrapping up close-out work with both the rocket and the spacecraft nestled in its protective nosecone. Final spacecraft battery charging is under way and the launch team completed a dress rehearsal on Monday.

A 34-story mobile service tower at Launch Complex 37B is scheduled to back away from the 206-foot-tall rocket at 6:15 a.m. on Friday.

The terminal countdown is scheduled to begin at 12:59 p.m. that day.

We'll have live coverage of the countdown and launch here in The Flame Trench. Look for countdown updates throughout the day and we'll broadcast NASA TV coverage beginning at 4 p.m. Simply click the NASA TV box on the righthand side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer, and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.

We'll also broadcast live coverage of a prelaunch news conference set for 1 p.m. Thursday here at the Launch Complex 39 Press Site at KSC -- the site of our Florida Today blockhouse.

The GOES-O spacecraft is the latest in a series of satellites designed to provide advance warning of severe weather conditions such as flash floods, tornadoes, hail storms and hurricanes.

Many of the satellite images shown during the weather segments of television news shows come from GOES satellites, which also play a critical role in tracking tropical storms as they spawn off the coast of west Africa and then cross the Atlantic Ocean. Many of those systems develop into tropical storms and hurricanes that threaten the southern and eastern seaboards of the United States.

Check out all the details on the $499 million mission in this Official NASA Press Kit.

Get a quick look here in this NASA Fact Sheet.

And for countdown bar charts, information on the flight trajectory and other details, check out this United Launch Alliance Mission Booklet.

ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge the NASA images of Launch Complex 37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket is being readied to launch a new national weather satellite. You can also click the enlarged image to get an even bigger, more detailed view. The images show the Delta IV rocket within the Mobile Service Tower at the complex. The MST is 330 feet tall, 90 feet wide and 60 feet deep. It weighs nine million pounds and will be backed on rails to a point 330 feet north of the rocket early Friday to clear the way for launch. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett.