New Solar Probe Launch Stalled by Weather
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At the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), enclosed in the Atlas V payload fairing, is lifted off the floor. Workers are preparing to lift SDO onto a transporter in the airlock. SDO is the first mission in NASA's Living With a Star Program and is designed to study the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth. CREDIT: NASA |
NASA's newest sun probe, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), will have to wait at least one more day to launch on its quest to study our star.
The new observatory was slated to lift off Wednesday morning from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, but strong winds stymied the launch.
NASA will try again to loft the solar spacecraft atop its Atlas 5 rocket on Thursday at 10:23 a.m. EST (1523 GMT), when a more optimistic 60 percent chance of good weather is predicted.
"The weather has not been kind so far to SDO," said U.S. Air Force Maj. Christopher Lovett, the launch's weather officer.
The $850 million mission is designed for a five-year run to continually observe the sun to learn more about its magnetic field and volatile solar weather.
"SDO is the most advanced spacecraft of its type ever designed and flown," said Michael Luther, deputy associate administrator for programs at NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The probe will gather higher quality data at a faster rate than any previous study of the sun, he said.
"We're all very excited about finally getting SDO up in the sky where it needs to be," said Stanford University scientist Phil Scherrer, principal investigator of SDO's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument.
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Visit SPACE.com for launch updates and complete coverage of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory from Staff Writer Clara Moskowitz in New York.
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