Technical Glitch Delays Launch of NASA's ICON Satellite on Pegasus Rocket
A NASA mission to launch a satellite from an airplane to the probe. Terrestrial atmosphere at the edge of space. It has been delayed at least another day due to a rocket failure that was detected just before launch on Wednesday (November 7).
The transport plane Stargazer L-1011 that carries The ionospheric connection satellite of NASA exploreror ICON, had already left its parking space at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida when a problem was detected in the Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket that should have launched the satellite from the air at 3:05 a.m. EST (0705 GMT)). The next launch opportunity for ICON is Thursday (November 8), NASA officials said.
"NASA and Northrop Grumman voided today's launch of #PegasusXL due to non-nominal data received during the captive flight," representatives of Northrop Grumman, who built the rocket, Said in a Twitter update. after the launch scrub. The L-1011 Stargazer aircraft has returned to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and will soon begin an investigation into the anomaly, they added.
Artistic representation of the ICON spacecraft in the work that studies the boundary between Earth and space.
Credit: NASA Goddard's Conceptual Image Lab / B. Monroe
The launch scrub is the last one in a Chain of delays for the ICON mission. During the past year. The satellite was originally scheduled for a launch on December 8, 2017, before problems with the rockets forced NASA to postpone it in 2018. The initial launch plan for ICON required that its Stargazer L-1011 take off from a base of the US Army UU Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific Ocean. After the initial delays last year, NASA moved the stage for the launch to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
NASA's ICON satellite is in good health as engineers evaluate the problem with its Pegasus XL enhancer, representatives of Northrop Grumman said.
The aircraft of the Stargazer L-1011 aircraft from Northrop Grumman with the Pegasus XL rocket that will launch NASA's ICON satellite in orbit will arrive at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on October 19, 2018. The satellite was programmed to be launched from the Stargazer using the Pegaso XL on November 7, 2018, but a technical failure delayed the flight.
Credit: Kim Shiflett / NASA
ICON is a $ 252 million mission to study the Earth's ionosphere., a level of the upper atmosphere of the Earth ionized by the sun's radiation, like never before. The satellite will orbit 360 miles (575 km) above Earth and will use four different instruments to track how the land winds and solar wind from the sun form the ionosphere, which covers a region of approximately 50 to 400 miles (80 to 645 km) above the Earth. planet. Scientists hope the spacecraft will help understand how those winds impact the communications and GPS signals we send through the ionosphere, as well as satellites and the low-Earth orbit spacecraft (such as the International Space Station) that fly through parts of the atmospheric layer NASA officials said.
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario