MD Power Outage To Blame This Time

Sources at NASA have told Aero-News Wednesday's scheduled launch of the New Horizons spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, has been postponed for a second (seventh?) time, pending resolution of a weather-related power outage at the spacecraft mission operations center in Maryland.

Mission managers are expected to determine Wednesday afternoon whether to proceed toward Thursday's launch opportunity, which runs from 1:08 pm. to 3:07 pm. EST.

Severe storms in the Baltimore-Washington area knocked out power in several locations, including the campus of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, where the New Horizons spacecraft will be operated in flight. With primary power out the New Horizons mission operations center was on backup power, but New Horizons mission managers wanted to have sufficient backup to those systems in place before conducting critical launch and early flight operations.

The move also allows strong winds and storms expected in Titusville, FL Wednesday to dissipate -- and at the moment, the forecast for Thursday calls for Florida sunshine, and winds well within the acceptable limits to launch the Atlas V rocket.

The New Horizons launch window extends through February 14, although a launch before February 2 is preferred to allow the spacecraft to "slingshot" off of Jupiter's graviational field, cutting two years off the trip to the farthest reaches of the Solar System.

As the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moon Charon, New Horizons looks to unlock one of the solar system's last, great planetary secrets. After launch aboard an Atlas V, the New Horizons spacecraft will cross the entire span of the solar system and conduct flyby studies of Pluto and its moon, Charon, in 2015. The seven science instruments on the piano-sized probe will shed light on the bodies' surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html