11:50 AM (Wednesday) | *Rocket launch at Wallops Island, VA has been rescheduled for Friday, February 14th at 3:43 PM*
Paul Dorian
Northrop Grumman is targeting liftoff of its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft for 5:39 p.m. ET Feb. 9 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island. Credit NASA
Overview
The rocket launch that was originally scheduled for late Sunday afternoon at NASA’s Wallops Island Facility has been rescheduled for Friday, February 14th at 3:43 PM and it may be visible throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. The original launch was scrubbed due to a faulty sensor issue which should be resolved by week’s end. Weather can be an issue on Friday as winds will be quite gusty out of the northwest throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. This will be Northrop Grumman’s 13th commercial resupply services mission to deliver NASA science investigations, supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. These resupply missions help NASA deliver critical research to the orbiting lab and increase its ability to conduct new investigations.
Visibility prediction map by NASA for Sunday’s launch at Wallops Island, Virginia. The time (in seconds) after liftoff is shown in the circled regions to give an idea as to when the rocket will become visible (weather permitting).
Details
Each resupply mission to the station delivers scientific investigations in the areas of biology and biotechnology, Earth and space science, physical sciences, and technology development and demonstrations.
Highlights of space station research facilitated by research aboard this Cygnus mission include:
· The Mobile SpaceLab, a tissue and cell culturing facility that launches and returns on space station resupply spacecraft to offer researchers a quick-turnaround, high-throughput platform that can perform a biology experiment without the need for crew operations for as long as a month.
· Plant Habitat-02, which will cultivate radishes in the Advanced Plant Habitat facility as a model plant that is nutritious and edible. The ability to reliably grow nutritionally-valuable food crops in space which will be critical for NASA’s human exploration of the moon and Mars.
· The Spacecraft Fire Experiment-IV (Saffire-IV) investigation, which will use the Cygnus resupply vehicle after it leaves the space station to examine the development and growth of a fire in different materials and environmental conditions. Understanding how fires spread in space is vital for developing flame-resistant materials and fire prevention measures.
Launch updates will be available via the Wallops Facebook and Twitter sites and launch coverage will begin at 3:15 PM ET on Friday, February 14th on NASA TV. For NASA TV streaming video visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv.
For viewing, look near the horizon at launch time….if in Philly, look to the southern sky; if in DC, look to the southeast; if in NYC, look to the south-southwest.
Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Perspecta, Inc.
perspectaweather.com
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