Cape Canaveral, Fla. – The launch of NASA’s first spacecraft to Pluto was delayed again Wednesday after strong winds forced a power outage at the mission’s control center in Laurel, Md. The control center will operate the spacecraft in flight.
Located on the campus of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the center operated on backup power Wednesday after primary power was cut by gusty winds that hit 68 mph.
Mission managers postponed the launch because they “wanted to have sufficient backup to those systems in place before conducting critical launch and early-flight operations,” NASA said in a statement.
After primary power was restored to the APL on Wednesday, the launch was rescheduled for today between 1:08 p.m. and 3:07 p.m. EST.
NASA said there is a 20 percent chance the launch will be delayed again today. The forecast calls for a slight chance of low clouds and a temperature of 64 degrees at launch time.
The mission’s launch window extends through Feb. 14. If it launches before Feb. 3, New Horizons should get a speed boost from flying past Jupiter that would allow it to reach Pluto by July 2015. If the craft misses the gravity assist, the earliest it could reach Pluto would be 2019.
The project has strong local ties. Alan Stern, a Boulder resident and a scientist with Southwest Research Institute, said Colorado has had more workers on the mission than any other state.
Lockheed Martin Corp.’s employees at its Waterton Canyon plant in Jefferson County built the Atlas V rocket that will launch the spacecraft. Ball Aerospace & Technologies in Boulder built a camera to be used on the mission, and the University of Colorado at Boulder built a dust counter. Both instruments are in the scientific payload. Also, Starsys Research in Boulder built hardware that helps control the spacecraft’s temperature.
Scientists hope the probe of Pluto will lead to details about the early formation of the solar system.
Staff writer Andy Vuong can be reached at 303-820-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com.
