With shuttle Atlantis home safely, the Air Force and United Launch Alliance are set to make a fourth attempt to launch a Global Positioning System satellite at 11 p.m. Thursday.
The launch window extends to 11:19 p.m., and the weather again looks promising, with a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions.
The mission's last attempt scrubbed six seconds before liftoff after an anomaly related to the steering system on one the rocket's two solid rocket motors halted the countdown automatically.
The first scrub, last Friday, was related to a faulty land line sending spacecraft telemetry signals to launch controllers. More time needed to resolve that issue prompted an early stop to Sunday's countdown.
After Monday's scrub, the Air Force's Eastern Range needed to reconfigure tracking assets for the shuttle's landing, and should be back in position for the Delta IV by Thursday night.
The Boeing-built satellite is the first in a new generation of GPS spacecraft in a $1.6 billion Air Force program called Block IIF.
Space news and analysis from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral 
No comments:
Post a Comment