It was a
structural issue, not high winds, which scrubbed the private launch firm
SpaceX's second attempt to send its first Falcon 1 rocket into orbit Monday.
SpaceX
officials found the problem with the rocket's first stage almost three hours
into the rocket's eight-hour launch window. Prior to the discovery, winds in
excess of 24 knots at its island launch site looked set to delay liftoff. The
rocket's spaceflight
debut has been pushed into early 2006.
"The launch
is scrubbed for the year," said SpaceX chief Elon Musk in an e-mail update to
the firm's El Segundo, California headquarters. "We noticed a structural issue
with the first stage fuel tank that will require repair."
Further
details on the structural glitch will be provided a soon as they are available,
SpaceX officials said, adding that the rocket must be made safe for ground
crews before engineers can track the problem at the launch pad.
"I expect that the earliest that launch would occur is late January," Musk said. "Third time's the charm."
Second
scrub
Monday's
launch attempt marked the second scrub for SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket and its
U.S. Air Force (USAF) cadet-built satellite payload FalconSat-2.
SpaceX
officials called
off a Nov. 26 launch attempt after exhausting a four-hour launch window,
during which the Falcon 1 rocket experienced a computer reboot and loss of
liquid oxygen supply.
Monday's
scrub announcement came at about 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT), half an hour after
the window opened for the Falcon 1 space shot at its Omelek Island launch pad
at the U.S. Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. The test
site sits on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands chain near
the equator.
"We're
going to get back on the pad as soon as we possibly can," Gwynne Shotwell,
SpaceX vice president of business development, during a teleconference with
reporters. "Structural repairs can be done on the ground and we can test them,
so I'm comfortable with this."
Shotwell
said the Kwajalein facility was available during the third week of January, but
whether SpaceX will choose to target that time for a new launch attempt is
still undetermined.
The Falcon
1 rocket is the first of a three-booster family planned by SpaceX to offer
commercial launch services to consumers, governments and the military.
The
two-stage rocket stands about 68 feet (21 meters) and is designed to launch
payloads of up to 1,256 pounds (570 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit. Its first
stage is also designed to parachute to the ocean and be reused on subsequent
flights.
Each Falcon
1 launch is slated to carry a $6.7 million price tag, SpaceX officials have
said.
A longer
wait
Monday's
scrub does mean that cadets at the USAF Academy in Colorado will have to wait a
bit longer to see their space plasma measuring satellite fly.
Cadets
designed and built the $800,000 FalconSat-2 spacecraft by January 2003 under a
program to provide students practical experience developing spacecraft. The
launch is supported by the USAF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA).
"You want
everything to be absolutely perfect on a launch like this," academy
spokesperson John van Winkle told SPACE.com, adding that there was some disappointment
- as expected - at the academy following the scrubbed launch attempt.
But many of
the cadets who helped design and build FalconSat-2 were unable to watch
Monday's launch attempt due to final exams, van Winkle said. A delay until
January would give them another chance.
Also, the
academy's ground control station did not plan to take initial telemetry data
until the start of the Spring semester in January anyway, van Winkle said.
"This has very
little impact on us over the long term, and may actually end up better for us,"
he added.
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