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Maryland storms delay New Horizons launch BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: January 18, 2006 Already running a day behind because of high winds in Florida, NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission was grounded today by storms in Maryland that knocked out power to the spacecraft control center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory near Washington. An emergency generator kicked in to keep the control center in operation, but spacecraft managers were not comfortable proceeding with a launch attempt today without a backup system in place. If primary power is restored, or if another generator can be moved in and hooked up in time, NASA will proceed with another launch attempt Thursday at 1:08 p.m. If not, launch will be delayed again. A decision on how to proceed is expected later today. "If we were in flight, we would not have an issue with this," said Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "We have a backup, we're running on backup right now. But I was not willing to launch on the backup because it means we don't have a backup (if something else goes wrong)." To reach Pluto, New Horizons must launch by Feb. 14 or the flight will be delayed to next year. But mission managers hope to get the $700 million mission off the ground by Jan. 28 to take advantage of Jupiter's gravity for a planned 2007 flyby that will boost the probe's velocity by 9,000 mph and get it to Pluto by 2015. After Jan. 28, the arrival date begins slipping and by the end of the launch window, an additional five years is required to reach the target. Stern is optimistic it won't come to that. "I've got 28 days to get the thing launched," he said today at the Kennedy Space Center. "That's a lifetime. We'll probably fly tomorrow, maybe the next day. ... I have this mental image of a padlock with 11,000 tumblers and when they're all right, we'll fly. Yesterday, we had 10,999. Today we have a different 10,999. One day, they'll all line up." Assuming power is restored in time, NASA and rocket-builder Lockheed Martin hope to launch New Horizons atop an Atlas 5 heavy-lift rocket at 1:08 p.m. Thursday. The launch window extends to 3:07 p.m. The launch window Friday opens at 1 p.m. and closes at 2:59 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of major ascent events For a Jan. 19 launch (all times in EST): TIME...............T+MM:SS...EVENT 01:08:00 PM...T-00:08...Guidance to inertial 01:08:00 PM...T-00:03...RD-180 ignition 01:08:00 PM...T+00:01...Liftoff 01:08:05 PM...T+00:05...Start RD-180 throttle down for max Q 01:08:27 PM...T+00:27...Roll, pitch, yaw maneuver complete 01:08:24 PM...T+00:44...Max Q (900 psf) 01:09:34 PM...T+01:34...SRB burnout 01:09:47 PM...T+01:47...SRB jettison (1,2) 01:09:48 PM...T+01:48...SRB jettison (3,4,5) 01:11:23 PM...T+03:23...Payload fairing jettison 01:11:28 PM...T+03:28...Forward load reactor jettison 01:12:28 PM...T+04:28...Booster engine cutoff 01:12:34 PM...T+04:34...Atlas/Centaur separation 01:12:44 PM...T+04:44...Centaur main engine start (MES) 1 01:18:06 PM...T+10:06...Centaur main engine cutoff (MECO) 1 (orbit: 101 X 132 sm) 01:40:37 PM...T+32:37...Centaur MES 2 01:50:16 PM...T+42:16...Centaur MECO 2 (altitude: 157 sm) 01:50:26 PM...T+42:26...Spacecraft/Star 48B spinup 01:50:29 PM...T+42:29...Centaur/Star 48B separation 01:51:06 PM...T+43:05...Star 48B ignition 01:52:33 PM...T+44:33...Star 48B burnout (altitude: 238 sm) 01:56:01 PM...T+48:00...Spacecraft separation Whenever it finally blasts off, New Horizons will depart Earth at a record 10 miles per second, passing the moon's orbit in just nine hours and reaching Jupiter in just 13 months. Even so, it will take the nuclear-powered New Horizons another eight years to reach Pluto, flying past the frozen world in July 2015 before streaking on into the Kuiper Belt, a broad disk of icy dwarf worlds left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. Equipped with a half-dozen sophisticated instruments, New Horizons is expected to return a treasure trove of information about the outer solar system, including the first close-up images of Pluto and its oversize moon, Charon. |
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After reaching Lockheed Martin's Vertical Integration Facility following the early morning drive across the Cape, a crane lifts the New Horizons spacecraft into the 30-story building for mounting atop the awaiting Atlas 5 vehicle.
The New Horizons spacecraft, mounted atop a special transporter, departs Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility after spending three months in the building undergoing testing, final closeouts, filling of its hydrazine fuel, mating with the third stage kick motor and spin-balance checks. The probe was driven to the Atlas 5 rocket's assembly building at Complex 41 for mating with the launcher.
With New Horizons enclosed within the Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket's nose cone, a large decal reading: "New Horizons: Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission" is applied to the payload fairing.
The New Horizons is packed away for its launch to Pluto as workers slide the two-piece Atlas 5 rocket nose cone around the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The Swiss-made shroud protects the spacecraft during ascent through Earth's atmosphere.
The first robotic space mission to visit the distant planet Pluto and frozen objects in the Kuiper Belt is explained by the project's managers and scientists in this NASA news conference from the agency's Washington headquarters on Dec. 19.