Waterton Canyon, Jefferson County – NASA had another bad sensor day Thursday.
In July, a fuel sensor in the space shuttle delayed its launch by 13 days.
This time, a fuel sensor in the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter scrubbed the Colorado-built craft’s liftoff.
The orbiter, a 2-ton probe designed to deliver more science data than all previous NASA Mars missions combined, was rescheduled to launch this morning.
During fueling of the launch rocket in Cape Canaveral, Fla., a sensor insisted the rocket was “dry” although liquid propellant was flowing into the tank.
When NASA controllers announced the scrub at 6:51 a.m., mission controllers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County sighed, turned away from their consoles and resigned themselves to another early morning today.
“So let’s go chow down,” one man said, heading for a platter of breakfast burritos, a standard launch perk.
“That’s rocket business,” said another, pulling off his headset.
Lockheed engineers built the school- bus-size Mars spacecraft as well as the Atlas V rocket expected to lift it into space for a seven-month, 500-million- mile journey.
Thursday, it was not clear if the problem was with the sensor itself, associated software or a leaky valve, said Kenny Starnes, deputy mission operations manager for Lockheed.
It has been a difficult few weeks for NASA, which launched and landed the space shuttle Discovery only after a raft of unexpected problems and delays.
A faulty sensor triggered the shuttle’s final launch delay. NASA engineers never figured out the problem but determined it would not likely cause a problem during flight. The sensor worked perfectly during the final launch countdown July 26.
The Mars orbiter was initially scheduled for liftoff Wednesday morning, but a potential problem with a rocket steering device postponed the launch.
Honeywell Aerospace, in Clearwater, Fla., found a flaw in a gyro, similar to two in the Lockheed Atlas V, during routine tests at the facility.
NASA and Lockheed engineers quickly decided that the problem probably would not affect the Mars rocket’s gyros, and that if there were a problem, it was unlikely to affect the launch.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
