High winds scrap SpaceX launch again
<p>A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket stands ready at launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday. High winds scrubbed the rocket's scheduled Tuesday evening launch.</p>
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Dangerously high winds kept a deep-space observatory grounded Tuesday and put off a radically new landing test of the booster rocket.
SpaceX called off its sunset launch with just 12 minutes remaining in the countdown because of gusts of 115 mph several miles up - strong enough to damage the rocket in flight.
It was the private company's second attempt in three days to launch the spacecraft first envisioned by former Vice President Al Gore and resuscitated by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Air Force.
Last-minute radar trouble foiled Sunday's launch effort, then SpaceX skipped Monday because of heavy rain.
"Extreme wind shear over Cape Canaveral," SpaceX's founder and chief executive Elon Musk warned via Twitter a few hours before Tuesday's try. "Feels like a sledgehammer when supersonic in the vertical. Hoping it changes."
It didn't, and SpaceX decided it was too risky to fly.
SpaceX must launch the observatory by Wednesday or face a delay until Feb. 20. The moon - lunar gravity to be more precise - would be in the way of the spacecraft during that eight-day blackout.
Excellent weather was forecast for today's 6:03 p.m. try.
Also on tap will be a bid by SpaceX to land its leftover first-stage booster on an ocean platform. Last month's inaugural test ended in flames after the launch of a supply run to the International Space Station.
The unmanned cargo ship, Dragon, coincidentally, returned home Tuesday.
Loaded with science samples, bad spacesuit parts and other broken equipment, the Dragon departed the space station four hours before the Falcon's planned liftoff. It splashed down in the Pacific Ocean west of Mexico's Baja Peninsula 1 1/2 hours after the scuttled launch.
Once aloft, the observatory, dubbed DSCOVR, will fly to a point 1 million miles from Earth in direct line with the sun to watch for incoming geomagnetic storms that could trigger power outages on Earth. This so-called Lagrange point, located 92 million miles from the sun, would provide as much as a one-hour lead time to prepare for potentially disruptive solar outbursts.
In addition, DSCOVR will provide a steady stream of pictures of the entire sunlit side of Earth. It was Gore's idea in 1998 to provide continuous views of Earth from afar that led to this space weather satellite. There was no immediate confirmation as to whether Gore returned for the launch attempt Tuesday as expected
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, said from Washington that there hasn't been a full, sunlit picture of the Earth since Apollo 17 in 1972 - NASA's last manned moon-landing mission.