A towering Atlas V rocket is perched on a seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today as United Launch Alliance gears up for the planned launch Tuesday of a top-secret government communications satellite.
The 191-foot-tall Atlas V and its clandestine cargo are slated to blast off from Launch Complex 41 at 5:35 p.m. Tuesday. The launch window will extend through 7:45 p.m. that night.The Atlas V emerged from the Vertical Integration Facility at the complex earlier today and made the short move out to the center of the pad, which is surrounded by protective lightning masts.
The weather forecast for launch continues to be less than outstanding.
The preliminary forecast calls for a 60 percent chance electrically charged clouds or lightning in the area will force United Launch Alliance to scrub on Tuesday. Meteorologists will be keeping close tabs on a seabreeze that could push electrically charged clouds off the tops of seasonal thunderstorms and into the Cape Canaveral area around launch time.
The forecast for a 24-hour delay worsens. Meteorologists say there is a 70 percent chance conditions would prohibit launch on Wednesday.The rocket's payload is so highly classified that no federal agency is laying claim to ownership. Not the National Reconnaissance Office. Not the Department of Defense. Not the U.S. Air Force. Or DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The payload is known by the acronym PAN. Supposedly that stands for "Pick A Name."
A mission sticker (above) offers little insight. It shows a smiling frog riding a rocket, waving a cowboy hat with planet Earth in the background. A slogan beneath the rocket says: "The Simplest Of Programs." Its nosecone is inscribed: "P360/PAN."
However, a patch acquired from The Space Review through nasaspaceflight.com suggests the acronym stands for "Palladium At Night."
Click HERE for a two-page mission "overview" from United Launch Alliance.
It lacks a lot of the detail ULA normally provides in documents for other launches but does include a mission events summary that shows the super-secret spacecraft will be deployed just under two hours into flight, which suggests a mission to geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above Earth.
That's the realm of communications and data relay spacecraft.
We'd be interested in hearing what you think. Simply leave your comments below.
We'll have live coverage of the launch here in The Flame Trench on Tuesday. See you then.
ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge the top photo of the Atlas V rocket emerging from the Vertical Integration Facility at Launch Complex 41 earlier today. Photo Credit: Pat Corkery/United Launch Alliance. Click on the mission sticker and you can barely see the little cartoon of the frog riding the rocket at the bottom of the image. The Palladium At Night patch will not enlarge, but note the interesting question mark hidden in the plume trailing the rocket.
2 comments:
Ah, just like the earliest days of The Program when people would gather near what is now Jetty Park and try to GUESS what was about to lift off and WHEN. Congratulations to all concerned for keeping under wraps what SHOULD be under wraps! GO ATLAS! GO CENTAUR! GO PAN(?)!
What is the status of the X-37B launch this scheduled for this evening, 4/22/2010?
Post a Comment