Posted on 03/06/2009 4:30:28 PM PST by KevinDavis
This is the official launch live thread of the Kepler Mission.
kennedy or Vandenberg?
NASA is preparing to pick up the countdown to the planned launch of a Delta II rocket at Cape Canaveral Force Station tonight and the agency also firmed up plans to launch shuttle Discovery next Wednesday on an International Space Station assembly mission.
The 12-story United Launch Alliance rocket and its payload — a planet-hunting NASA space probe — are slated to blast off from Launch Complex 17-B at 10:49 p.m.
NASA will have two, three-minute windows in which to put the Kepler spacecraft en route to its operational orbit. The first will extend from 10:49 p.m. through 10:52 p.m. and the second will be 11:13 p.m. through 11:16 p.m.
You can watch NASA TV coverage of the countdown and launch starting at 8:30 p.m. Simply click on the NASA TV box on the right hand side of this page to launch our NASA TV viewer and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.
The weather is expected to be near-perfect for launch. But prevailing winds is forcing NASA and United Launch Alliance to move its press site for the launch.
Press Site 1 at the air station sits a mile-and-a-half west of the two pads at Launch Complex 17, just east of the old NASA Mercury Mission Control Building. Air Force range safety officials fear that prevailing winds would carry a toxic cloud over Press Site 1 in the event of a launch failure early in flight. So the media will caravan to an alternative site at NASA’s KARS Park off Hall Road on north Merritt Island.
Vendenberg...
KSC:
Delta II launch, Friday night, two windows of 3 mins each: March 5.....10:48:43 p.m. EST....11:16:34 p.m. EST
See http://spaceflightnow.com/delta/d339/090225windows.html
That would be the Vandy pad that is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out on the Eastern part of the base, right? :)
Ok Kennedy dam won’t see it
Let’s hope they have better luck than that Global Carbon Monitoring satellite that ended up in really, really low earth orbit. (It crashed in Antarctica.)
My mistake it is the Cape..
A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket is prepared for the launch of the Kepler Telescope for NASA Kepler, from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, March 6, 2009. NASA Kepler is a NASA Discover mission, a space-borne telescope designed to search a nearby region of the Milky Way for Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zone of stars like the sun. There are two launch windows, 10:49 to 10:52 p.m. and 11:13 to 11:16 p.m. EST. REUTERS/Carleton Bailie/United Launch Alliance/Handout
The Kepler mission and its scope. NASA is preparing to launch the Kepler space telescope Friday to help answer a question that has boggled the minds of astronomers for centuries: is Earth the only habitable planet in the galaxy?(AFP/Graphic)
LOX loading begins! Cryogenic liquid oxygen, chilled to Minus-298 degrees F, has started flowing from the storage reservoir at Complex 17, through plumbing and into the bottom of the Delta 2 rocket. The LOX will be consumed by the first stage main engine during the first four-and-a-half minutes of flight along with the 10,000 gallons of RP-1 kerosene already loaded aboard the vehicle.
I was thinking why can’t we modify the Delta to send Astronauts to the Space Station or send them to the moon??
Payloads would be smaller but cost would be as well
I’m pretty sure we can make a modified Delta to carry humans into space.. I know it is not going to happen, but it is in an idea.
I didn’t know that..
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