NASA managers today officially scheduled a 10:49 p.m. Friday launch time for the agency's Kepler telescope, a $600-million mission that will search for Earth-like planets in habitable zones around other stars. "We're ready to fly," said NASA spokesman George Diller after a flight readiness review at Kennedy Space Center that reconvened briefly at 6 p.m.
Managers determined that United Launch Alliance's Delta II rocket does not have much in common with an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL booster that failed last week.
Engineers took extra time this afternoon to complete their review of the two vehicles, focusing on the payload fairing system that did not separate on the Taurus last Tuesday, causing a NASA satellite to crash into the ocean.
"They went through a very methodical process of eliminating all the areas of potential similarities or commonalities, and really didn't find any," said Diller. "We had to make sure we had gone through everything, and we finished that up this afternoon."
Diller said no other serious issues were presented during today's readiness review.
NASA's KSC-based Launch Services Program oversaw the failed Taurus launch - the program's first failure since it was created in 1998 - and is managing the Kepler launch.
The go-ahead to blast off Friday sets the stage for fueling of the Delta II's second stage to begin Tuesday morning at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 17-B.
On Friday, Kepler has two three-minute launch windows, the first starting at 10:49 p.m. and the second at 11:13 p.m.
Weather is expected to be very good, with only a 10 percent chance of conditions prohibiting a liftoff.
The Kepler observatory will survey more than 100,000 stars in the Milky Way. It will watch for stars to wink as orbiting planets cross their path, and measure the change in brightness.
Mission scientists hope by the end of a 3.5-year mission to announce if Earth-size planets in habitable zones around stars - where liquid water could exist on the surface - are common or not.
A pre-launch press briefing held at KSC is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Thursday, followed immediately by a mission science overview.
You can watch the briefing and the launch live here on The Flame Trench, by clicking the NASA TV image above to launch a viewer.
Before then, check out this fact sheet for more background on the mission.
For a full schedule of upcoming Cape launches, click here.
IMAGE NOTE: Click on the image above to enlarge it. Last week at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 17-B, workers watched closely as the second half of the payload fairing moves toward NASA's Kepler spacecraft (left) to complete encapsulation. The fairing is a molded structure that fits flush with the outside surface of the rocket and forms an aerodynamically smooth nose cone, protecting the spacecraft during launch and ascent. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
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