NASA has delayed the launch of its first mission to Pluto because of a possible problem with a launch rocket built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems engineers in Jefferson County.
The New Horizons mission will launch no earlier than Jan. 17, five days later than expected, the space agency said Monday.
A Lockheed spokeswoman said the extra time will let engineers reopen the booster rocket to check for damage found in a similar rocket built in Colorado.
Lockheed’s Julie Andrews called the move precautionary.
“Nothing in the analysis would lead you to believe it’s not going to operate exactly as expected,” she said from Cape Canaveral, Fla., where the launch will take place.
NASA officials declined to comment on the rocket problem until more is known.
“Keep in mind, the success of this mission is getting the goods to Pluto, Charon and the Kuiper Belt,” said Alan Stern, principal mission investigator and a scientist with Boulder’s Southwest Research Institute, SWRI.
“We’ll fly when we’re ready, and then we’ll make some history,” he said.
New Horizons, estimated to cost $675 million, will travel to Pluto, which appears hazy and indistinct in even the best images shot by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The tiny spacecraft, which weighs about 1,000 pounds, is scheduled to launch on a powerful booster to get it moving quickly enough to make Pluto during the lifetimes of the people who planned the mission.
“This is the most compact … high-performance payload yet to fly on a U.S. mission,” said Bill Gibson, New Horizons science payload manager with SWRI in San Antonio.
New Horizons’ launch vehicle is a modified Atlas V rocket, and in September, Lockheed engineers in Colorado discovered a glitch while testing a similar rocket. The booster failed a pressure test, Andrews said.
Although the pressure was much higher than what the booster should experience during launch, she said, the failure prompted NASA and Lockheed officials to open up several Atlas V’s at launch pads across the nation to look for damage.
The Pluto rocket had no apparent problems, but engineers found hairline cracks inside a similar rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Andrews said.
NASA officials asked Lockheed to reopen the Pluto mission’s booster rocket, she said.
Even if New Horizons launches during its ideal window of Jan. 17 to Jan. 31, the craft will take about 10 years to reach Pluto, nearly 3 billion miles away.
If weather or other problems delay the launch until the latter part of the window – the first two weeks in February – it will add three to four years to New Horizons’ journey, Stern said.
That’s because the craft won’t be able to take advantage of a speed-boosting swing around Jupiter.
The team will have a secondary launch window in February 2007, if necessary.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
