And Even Then, It Ain't Lookin' Good

More weather woes for NASA, this time affecting its delay-plagued Dawn spacecraft. A lightning advisory near Kennedy Space Center Thursday morning forced the space agency to scrub its plans to begin fueling the second-stage of the probe's United Launch Alliance Delta II booster rocket.

The delay in fueling pushes the launch date for Dawn to July 8, one day later than previously scheduled. NASA will again try to fuel the second stage Thursday afternoon; if the weather remains a concern, fueling will be performed Friday.

Lightning wasn't the only concern at the Cape. Also Thursday morning, the temperature within the fairing caused the required temperature of the second stage to be too warm for fueling to begin. The fairing temperature is being lowered by 10 degrees so that oxidizer loading can begin Thursday afternoon, if weather is acceptable.

The launch window on Sunday, July 8, extends from 4:04 to 4:33 pm EDT... but the chance of not meeting the launch weather criteria on Sunday is 60 percent, according to NASA.

These latest delays are but the latest to strike the problematic Dawn spacecraft, which NASA hopes will eventually be sent into the heavens to study the twin asteroids Ceres and Vesta, between Mars and Jupiter. Cancelled by the space agency due to cost overruns in early 2006, before being reinstated one month later, Dawn's planned June launch date was already moved off once, after a crane used to stack segments of the Delta II booster broke down.

A worker's wrench also fell on the spacecraft's solar panel during a procedure to prepare the spacecraft for spin-balance testing, though it did not damage any cells.

FMI: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/