Two NASA
satellites are stuck on Earth for at least one more day after a last minute
glitch prevented an early Friday launch.
The space
agency's CloudSat
and CALIPSO Earth weather satellites were just 48 seconds from riding a
Boeing-built Delta 2 rocket spaceward from California's Vandenberg Air Force
Base when launch officials called off the attempt. Another attempt could occur
as early as Saturday, NASA said.
NASA
spokesperson Bruce Buckingham said the CALIPSO satellite - a spacecraft built
for NASA and the French Space Agency (CNES) - lost both primary and backup
communications with its French support center, prompting the launch scrub.
"The communications
links went down simultaneously," NASA launch commentator Bruce Buckingham
said, adding that the links were required to proceed with the launch.
While
launch controllers were later able to reestablish contact between CALIPSO -
which sits above CloudSat aboard their Delta 2 rocket - the delay prevented the
two spacecraft from catching their launch window at exactly 6:02:08 a.m. EDT
(1002:08 GMT). The satellites are now being readied for an April 22 launch at
6:02:26 a.m. EDT (1002:26 GMT), NASA officials said.
The
CloudSat and CALIPSO - short for Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder
Satellite Observations - are both aimed at providing a new three-dimensional
view of Earth's clouds and aerosols, which are fine particles suspended in the
atmosphere.
CALIPSO
carries a lidar laser ranging instrument to identify and measure aerosols, as
well as two other instruments. CloudSat, meanwhile, is equipped with a powerful
radar to scan clouds layer by layer and pick apart the cloud, water and snow
components.
"We carry a
90 gigahertz radar, the first-ever to be flown in space" CloudSat mission director Ron Boain said just before today's
launch scrub.
CloudSat
and CALIPSO are expected to fly in a 438-mile (705-kilometer) orbit in
formation with three other Earth watching satellites already in space to make
up the "Afternoon Train" (A Train).
Together
with France's PARASOL
satellite and NASA's Aqua
and Aura
spacecraft, the two new probes will build a comprehensive, three-dimensional
picture of Earth's weather, climate change and possibly the human contributions
to the greenhouse effect and global warming, mission scientists said.
The
$185 million CloudSat
and $223 million CALIPSO probes are expected to spend three years observing the
Earth once they reach orbit, NASA said.
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