CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission has been delayed until 10:19 a.m. EDT (1419 GMT) on Friday (Oct. 13), to account for inclement weather that is barreling in from the Gulf of Mexico.
Psyche, NASA’s probe to explore a metal asteroid of the identical name, was scheduled to launch on Thursday morning (Oct. 12) on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Pad 39A here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Nonetheless, during a prelaunch press briefing on Wednesday (Oct. 11) , bleak predictions for the subsequent morning’s forecast left only a 20% probability of favorable weather conditions.
As Wednesday night’s storms blew in, the choice was made to forgo Thursday’s launch try and capitalize on the higher weather predicted for launch windows on Friday and Saturday (Oct. 14).
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Arlena Moses, launch weather officer with the U.S. Space Force, was at Wednesday’s press briefing and explained the growing concerns.
“One in every of the fundamental watch items now has sort of shifted from just the storms in the realm to our liftoff winds,” Moses said. “Behind this warm front and particularly with that area of low pressure coming towards us, we expect winds to select up in a short time out of the south and southwest. We could see 20 to 25 miles an hour [32 to 40 kph], likely some stronger gusts with that as well.”
Those conditions were expected to persist through Thursday’s launch window, prompting mission teams Wednesday evening to make the choice to delay until Friday.
“For our first backup window, Friday morning, 50% probability for go conditions, with our concerns still being related to storms in the realm, where we’ve got anvil clouds, some thick clouds, that are layered clouds, in addition to cumulus clouds we get related to storms,” Moses explained in the course of the briefing.
” Saturday morning, a 3rd backup window, there remains to be concerning the same probability, about 50% probability of go, and fairly similar conditions here, where there could also be some storms around, but we expect most of any storms to be after our morning lunch window,” she added.
The choice to forgo Thursday’s window can also must do with characteristics of Psyche’s launch vehicle. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has limited launch recycle attempts, meaning the rocket might be fully fueled for launch as much as two times before needing maintenance enough to delay launch greater than a pair days.
Tim Dunn, NASA’s senior launch director for the Launch Services Program, touched on a few of the resource constraints during Wednesday’s briefing. “The constraints for recycled attempts is resulting from the vast quantity of densified LOX (liquid oxygen) that we use with the Falcon Heavy configuration,” he explained. After a second fueling attempt, “we could be down about five days to replenish the LOX in the bottom sphere and get it right into a dissipated state,” Dunn said.
So NASA is now aiming for Friday’s 50% “go” window, with Saturday’s similar coin toss probability of favorable launch conditions as a backup. The brand new plan allows the next probability of success should the primary launch attempt scrub closer to T-0 within the countdown.
Psyche’s launch window runs through Oct. 25. After it gets off the bottom, the probe will head toward the asteroid Psyche, which lies within the fundamental asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers think the bizarre metallic body could be the exposed core of a protoplanet; the Psyche mission will help them take its measure.