kennedy or Vandenberg?
NASA is preparing to pick up the countdown to the planned launch of a Delta II rocket at Cape Canaveral Force Station tonight and the agency also firmed up plans to launch shuttle Discovery next Wednesday on an International Space Station assembly mission.
The 12-story United Launch Alliance rocket and its payload — a planet-hunting NASA space probe — are slated to blast off from Launch Complex 17-B at 10:49 p.m.
NASA will have two, three-minute windows in which to put the Kepler spacecraft en route to its operational orbit. The first will extend from 10:49 p.m. through 10:52 p.m. and the second will be 11:13 p.m. through 11:16 p.m.
You can watch NASA TV coverage of the countdown and launch starting at 8:30 p.m. Simply click on the NASA TV box on the right hand side of this page to launch our NASA TV viewer and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.
The weather is expected to be near-perfect for launch. But prevailing winds is forcing NASA and United Launch Alliance to move its press site for the launch.
Press Site 1 at the air station sits a mile-and-a-half west of the two pads at Launch Complex 17, just east of the old NASA Mercury Mission Control Building. Air Force range safety officials fear that prevailing winds would carry a toxic cloud over Press Site 1 in the event of a launch failure early in flight. So the media will caravan to an alternative site at NASA’s KARS Park off Hall Road on north Merritt Island.
Vendenberg...
KSC:
Delta II launch, Friday night, two windows of 3 mins each: March 5.....10:48:43 p.m. EST....11:16:34 p.m. EST
See http://spaceflightnow.com/delta/d339/090225windows.html
Ok Kennedy dam won’t see it