Launch Weather Forecast Improves For Delta IV Rocket

The countdown to the planned launch tonight of a Delta IV rocket and a new national weather satellite is continuing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the weather forecast is improving.

Launch Weather Officer Joel Tumbiolo of the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron just told launch controllers that ground winds are subsiding and now he is saying there is a 95 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for launch. That's a five percent improvement from the previous forecast.

The 22-story rocket remains scheduled to blast off from Launch Complex 37B at the beginning of an hour-long window that will open at 6:17 p.m. The $500 million weather satellite atop the rocket ultimately will join two other Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites in orbits 22,300 miles above Earth.

Engineers now are fueling the first and second stages of the two-stage rocket. The first stage is powered by a Pratt & Whitney RS-68 engine. The second stage is powered by an RL-10 upper stage engine.

The launch will be the second from Cape Canaveral this year for United Launch Alliance, a joint partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that merges the Atlas and Delta rocket families. An Atlas V rocket carried NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory into orbit in early February. ULA has launched 38 consecutive successful Atlas and Delta rocket missions since the company started doing business in Decmber 2006.