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NASA News Briefs and Releases BBSNews 2007 Compiled by Kandy Ringer |
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NASA Postpones Phoenix Launch
BBSNews 2007-08-01 -- (NASA) Friday's launch of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket has been postponed 24 hours. The two available launch times on Saturday, Aug. 4, are 2:26:34 and 3:02:59 a.m. Pacific Time (5:26:34 a.m. and 6:02:59 a.m. Eastern Time).
Due to a forecast for severe weather around the Kennedy Space Center launch pad on Tuesday afternoon, fueling of the second stage will not be completed Tuesday afternoon. While this is expected to be done Wednesday morning, there is insufficient contingency time in the schedule to move forward with the planned Friday launch.
The pre-launch news conference has been rescheduled to Thursday, Aug. 2, at 11 a.m. Pacific Time (2 p.m. Eastern Time) at the NASA press site at Kennedy Space Center. NASA TV and Web coverage for launch will begin at 12:30 a.m. Pacific Time (3:30 a.m. Eastern Time) on Saturday.
More information about NASA TV, streaming video, and downlink and schedule information is available online.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver. International contributions are provided by the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the University of Copenhagen, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Additional information on Phoenix is available online at NASA/Phoenix or Arizona/Phoenix.
Information on NASA's Mars program is available online.