Live At The Cape: Delta IV Countdown Under Way

LIVE IMAGES: The images above are from live video feeds at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where United Launch Alliance is preparing to launch a Delta IV rocket and a new national weather satellite. The image on the left is from the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Channel; on the right is the Delta IV rocket on Launch Complex 37. They will automatically refresh to the most up-to-the-minute image every 30 seconds.

The countdown to the planned launch of a Delta IV rocket is under way at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today as mission managers keep a wary eye on the weather.

The 206-foot-tall rocket and its payload -- a new national weather satellite -- remain slated to blast off from Launch Complex 37 during a launch window that will extend from 6:14 a.m. to 7:14 a.m.

The weather outlook, however, is not good. Meteorologists say there is a 70-percent chance stormy weather will bring electrically charged clouds into the area during the launch window. A rocket flying through cumulus or anvil clouds could trigger destructive bolts of lightning, so flight rules prohibit launching in such conditions.

Check out all the details in this Official Launch Forecast from the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron, which provides forecasting services for all launches from the air base and NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center.

A weather briefing is coming up at noon -- the point at which mission managers will decide whether to proceed with fuel-loading operations. Engineers are scheduled to respond to a Call-To-Stations in the Delta Operations Control Center at 12:59 p.m.

You can read about one of the key engineers -- the Delta launch team systems administrator -- here in our Rocket Tester story that ran on the front page of the newspaper today.

We'll have live countdown status updates all day and you can watch live NASA TV coverage right here in The Flame Trench starting 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.

The Delta IV is slated to carry into space a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) that will monitor weather systems across the western hemisphere and provide advance warning of flash floods, tornadoes, hail storms and hurricanes.

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.