ICON – Pegasus XL – Cape Canaveral AFS, L-1011 "Stargazer" – 11.10.2019 – 04:59:05 ДМВ

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Брифинг завершен

 

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Прогноз погоды L-2 на 10 октября (UTC)

L-2 Pegasus



Пусковой день   (10.10) - 30 % GO
Резервный день (11.10) - 60 % GO

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https://blogs.nasa.gov/icon/2019/10/08/nasa-northrop-grumman-prepare-for-launch-of-icon/
https://blogs.nasa.gov/kennedy/2019/10/08/nasa-northrop-grumman-prepare-for-launch-of-icon/

NASA, Northrop Grumman Prepare for Launch of ICON

Danielle Sempsrott
Posted Oct 8, 2019 at 10:16 am


Northrop Grumman's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft has arrived at the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Oct. 1, 2019. The company's Pegasus XL rocket, containing NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), is attached beneath the aircraft. ICON will study the frontier of space – the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather fr om below meets space weather above. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

NASA and Northrop Grumman will hold a mission briefing at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 8, in preparation for the launch of NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite. Tune in to NASA TV and the agency's website to watch the mission briefing live.

The Northrop Grumman L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, carrying a Pegasus XL rocket with the agency's ICON satellite, will take off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip on Oct. 9. The launch window will be open from 9:25 to 10:55 p.m., with a targeted release at 9:30 p.m. Ignition of the Pegasus XL rocket will occur five seconds after release from the Stargazer.

ICON is designed to study the frontier of space: the dynamic zone high in our atmosphere wh ere terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above.

Be sure to follow our blog for launch updates. Live launch coverage here and on NASA TV will begin at 9:15 p.m. on Oct. 9.

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https://blogs.nasa.gov/icon/2019/10/08/pegasus-icon-satellite-set-to-launch-tomorrow/

Pegasus, ICON Satellite Set to Launch Tomorrow

Danielle Sempsrott
Posted Oct 8, 2019 at 4:28 pm


Live coverage of NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) Prelaunch Mission Briefing fr om Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Representatives from NASA, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, the Air Force's 45th Space Wing, and the University of California, Berkeley provided an overview of the ICON mission. ICON will launch on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket from the company's Stargazer L-1011 on Wednesday, October 9, 2019. The ICON mission was managed by NASA's Launch Services Program. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite is set to launch from a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket – carried by the company's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft – on Wednesday, Oct. 9, from the Skid Strip runway at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Once Stargazer is airborne and has reached the right altitude and location, the rocket will be released for launch.


Will Ulrich, launch weather officer with the U.S. Air Force 45th Space Wing, speaks to news media during a prelaunch mission briefing for NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), on Oct. 8, 2019, in the News Center auditorium at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

One thing to keep an eye on for tomorrow's launch is the weather. With a cold front moving in and a forecast of scattered showers throughout the day, weather officials from the U.S. Air Force 45th Space Wing are currently predicting a 30% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch. Primary weather concerns are the cumulus cloud rule and lightning rule.

"I wish I had some better news, but ultimately, we're going to do our best with all the tools we have at our disposal to ensure that tomorrow's launch – or potentially Thursday night's launch – is as safe as possible," said Will Ulrich, launch weather officer for the U.S. Air Force 45th Space Wing, in Tuesday afternoon's mission briefing.

The 90-minute launch window opens at 9:25 p.m. EDT on Oct. 9, with a targeted release at 9:30 p.m. If ICON is unable to launch tomorrow due to unfavorable weather conditions, the backup launch date is Oct. 10, with the same targeted release time.

"If we go to the backup day – hopefully we don't need to have a 24-hour delay, but should we – conditions are going to be a little better," said Ulrich. Thursday's forecast shows less chance of rain, and weather conditions improve to a 60% chance "go" for launch.

Once ICON reaches orbit, it will study the dynamic zone high in our atmosphere wh ere terrestrial weather from below meets space weather from above.

Live launch coverage and countdown will begin at 9:15 p.m. on Oct. 9 here on the blog, on NASA TV and the agency's website. Learn more about NASA's ICON mission at: https://www.nasa.gov/icon

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NASA | ICON mission briefing | Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL rocket

 space googlevesaire

Трансляция началась 4 часа назад

Briefing from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VLdg6Z5_Cwo (59:21)

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/10/08/pegasus-rocket-ready-for-airborne-launch-with-nasa-scientific-satellite/

Pegasus rocket ready for airborne launch with NASA scientific satellite
October 8, 2019 | Stephen Clark


A Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket is mounted underneath an L-1011 carrier jet, which will fire the launcher into orbit as soon as Wednesday night off Florida's east coast. Credit: NASA/ Ben Smegelsky

After a year-long delay to troubleshoot recurring erroneous data signatures fr om the rudder of Northrop Grumman's air-launched Pegasus XL rocket, NASA is eager to send a $252 million research satellite into orbit as soon as Wednesday night off Florida's east coast on a mission to probe the ionosphere, a region near the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

The Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, mission is dedicated to studying the link between Earth's weather systems and space weather driven by solar activity on the ionosphere, a layer in the upper atmosphere where plasma variations can impact satellite communications and GPS navigation signals.

"The ionosphere is continually changing, and it's very dynamic, so that can have big impacts on our ability to do this kind of communication," said Nicky Fox, head of NASA's heliophysics division. "So not only is it a great place to go and study plasma physics, but it's also a region that has a big space weather impact on us."

Northrop Grumman's L-1011 carrier jet will take off at 8:32 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0032 GMT Thursday) fr om the Skid Strip airfield at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and head for a drop box roughly 50 to 100 miles (80 to 160 kilometers) east of Daytona Beach.

If all goes according to plan, L-1011 flight crew will release the 57-foot-long (17-meter) Pegasus XL rocket at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT). Five seconds later, the three-stage Pegasus launcher will ignite and fire into orbit with the ICON spacecraft.

Bad weather is in the forecast Wednesday night, however, and there is just a 30 percent chance of favorable conditions for the Pegasus launch. Forecasters from the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron predict numerous rain showers and thunderstorms Wednesday night associated with a weather system moving through Florida could violate launch weather rules related to lightning and cumulus clouds.

There is a 90-minute launch window available Wednesday that opens at 9:25 p.m. EDT (0125 GMT), enough time for the L-1011 carrier jet to make a second pass through the drop box if needed.

Better weather is forecast Thursday, when there's a 60 percent probability of acceptable conditions for launch.

"In the event of a 24-hour delay, precipitation chances appear to diminish through the day on Thursday as drier mid-level air works into the area," forecasters wrote in a launch weather outlook. "Precipitation should be more isolated and the potential for thunder is significantly lower. The primary concern (Thursday) will be the cumulus rule."

It has been a rocky start in getting ICON into space.

Two launch campaigns last year were cut short by erroneous data signatures that showed movement on the Pegasus rocket's rudder, one of three aerodynamic control surfaces on the solid-fueled rocket's winged first stage.

"It was the rudder actuator (wh ere) we were seeing some anomalous position feedback readings, basically noise spikes in the feedback line," said Phil Joyce, vice president of space launch programs at Northrop Grumman. We didn't understand those, but they were significant enough that we were concerned that, if we launched with that condition present, those noise spikes could couple into our control system and cause a bad day."

Engineers from Northrop Grumman and NASA spent 11 months analyzing the problem, testing hardware, developing corrective actions, and then preparing the Pegasus XL rocket and the ICON satellite for another try at launching.

"We wanted to get things right on this rocket," said Omar Baez, NASA's launch director for the ICON mission. "We have no second chances on these types of missions, and we want to get it right."

Teams first noticed the rudder readings during a ferry flight last June to the mission's original launch base on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Managers decided to return the rocket to Vandenberg Air Force Base — home to the Pegasus launch processing team — during a planned stopover in Hawaii.

NASA and Northrop Grumman officials agreed to relocate the mission's staging base to Cape Canaveral in the aftermath of the aborted Kwajalein launch campaign. Launching from Florida was not originally planned because the ICON satellite was expected to be slightly heavier than it turned out to be, which would have required a launch from a location closer to the equator.

But similar rudder data readings cropped up during a ferry flight from Vandenberg to Cape Canaveral last October, prompting more data reviews and hardware changes in an attempt to resolve the problem. Teams thought they might have the issue fixed, but telemetry data again showed a potential problem after the L-1011 and Pegasus departed Cape Canaveral toward the drop box for a launch attempt Nov. 7.

Managers ordered another stand-down to further investigate the problem, and the L-1011 and Pegasus returned to Vandenberg.


This view of the Pegasus XL rocket inside the Building 1555 processing facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shows the vehicle's aerodynamic control surfaces, including the rudder at the top of the first stage. Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin

"It really says something about a team when you have a lot of adversity, and ICON is certainly no different," Joyce said Tuesday. "This is an incredibly complex machine. We saw some things on our previous launch attempt that none of us were comfortable with, and we decided to stand down, go address those and make sure that we really understood what was happening there.

Engineers did not see the spurious rudder data during pre-launch testing on the ground. The problem only manifested itself when the Pegasus was airborne under the L-1011 carrier jet at low pressures and cold temperatures.

"That required a really extensive ground test, modeling, simulation and flight test activity to get the bottom of what was really an extremely challenging problem, one of the most challenging that I've seen in my career in this business over some 30 years," Joyce said.

"But we got there," he said. "With NASA, we were able to get to some surprising results that told us a little bit more about the system that we have on the Pegasus, and educated us, and we made some really smart corrective actions."

Engineers were unable to identify the root cause of the erroneous rudder position data. The Pegasus launcher set to deliver ICON into orbit is the first to fly with a new actuator control unit. Joyce said engineers, among there things, made some "slight modifications" to electronics controlling the rudder actuators on the Pegasus first stage.

"There were actually five or six different things that we thought were coupling into this phenomenon that we were seeing, and what we did to correct the problem is we went and attacked all of those," Joyce said. "So we modified our electronics to be less sensitive to this, we modified some of the hardware in that feedback circuit to be more robust to the environment that the L-1011 provides ... And we went back and demonstrated that the modified systems would handle those environments in the lab, and then we conducted two test flights out at Vandenberg."

On Oct. 1, the L-1011 ferried the Pegasus rocket back to Cape Canaveral. Engineers have not detected a recurrence of the rudder data issues in flight since last year.

Previous concerns related to ICON's Pegasus rocket delayed the mission from 2017.

Engineers wanted more time to inspect the Pegasus rocket motors after they were mishandled during shipment to Vandenberg. That pushed the launch back from June to December 2017, the next availability in the military-run range at the mission's original launch site at Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.

Then managers decided to ground the mission to assess the reliability of bolt-cutters used to jettison the Pegasus rocket's payload fairing and separate the satellite in orbit.

Those issues were closed out before the first ICON launch campaign last year, when the rudder problems first appeared.


NASA's ICON spacecraft was attached to its Pegasus XL rocket Sept. 10 inside Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin

The ICON mission will be the 44th launch of a Pegasus rocket on a satellite delivery mission, and the 34th in the Pegasus XL configuration with uprated solid rocket motors. It will be the seventh Pegasus launch based out of Cape Canaveral, which hosted the most recent Pegasus rocket mission in December 2016.

The delays have not caused ICON's total cost to rise above NASA's $252 million budget for the mission, Fox said Tuesday.

Since arriving back on Florida's Space Coast last week, the Pegasus launch team have put the rocket through a launch day dress rehearsal and completed most of the final closeouts on the vehicle.

Ground crews at the Skid Strip airfield will begin launch day preparations Wednesday afternoon. The final hands-on tasks on the Pegasus rocket include the removal of safety pins from the launcher's ordnance devices, and the installation of a door on the rocket's payload shroud after checks of internal batteries.

The launch team will begin steps in the Pegasus pre-launch checklist shortly after 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). After starting its engines, the L-1011 carrier aircraft will taxi to the Skid Strip runway for takeoff toward the planned drop point more than 100 miles east-northeast of Cape Canaveral.

The L-1011 carrier jet, a converted airliner previously owned by Air Canada, will head east, then turn around and fly west through the drop box to assess weather conditions. The "race track" pattern will culminate in a final turn to place the carrier aircraft on an easterly heading at an altitude of 39,000 feet (11,900 meters) and an airspeed of Mach 0.82, according to Don Walter, the L-1011's command pilot.

A four-man flight crew and three Pegasus launch vehicle operators will be aboard the L-1011 during the ICON launch.

In the final minute before launch, the Pegasus rocket will sweep its fins to verify their readiness before Steve Gunn, Walter's co-pilot, pushes a button to command release of the launch vehicle.

Hooks will open to allow the Pegasus to free fall for five seconds to a distance of several hundred feet below the L-1011, before the solid-fueled first stage motor fires to begin the climb into space.

"You lose 52,000 pounds (23,600 kilograms) all at once," Walter said. "The airplane wants to go up. It's kind of like a ride at Disneyland, which is a good thing for us. When that rocket lights off, we want to be a long way away."


The L-1011 flight crew. From left to right: Flight engineer Bob Taylor, pilot and flight engineer Mark Kenny, co-pilot Steve Gunn, and command pilot Don Walter. Credit: Alex Polimeni/Spaceflight Now

The Pegasus XL's Orion 50S XL first stage motor will ignite and ramp up to 163,000 pounds of thrust, and the rocket will pitch upward to gain altitude in front of the carrier jet as Walter steers the aircraft awards from the launcher's exhaust plume.

The first stage will burn out at T+plus 1 minute, 17 seconds, followed by stage separation around 16 seconds later. An Orion 50 XL motor will fire at an altitude of around 237,000 feet (72.1 kilometers) with around 44,000 pounds of thrust.

The Pegasus will be above the dense lower layers of the atmosphere by T+plus 2 minutes, 10 seconds, at which time the rocket will shed its clamshell-like nose cone to reveal the ICON satellite.

The Orion 50 XL second stage motor will consume all its solid fuel at T+plus 2 minutes, 48 seconds, then begin a four-minute coast phase for the rocket to climb to the targeted altitude for the ICON mission. During this time, the rocket's on-board computer will calculate when it needs to ignite the third stage based on the performance of the booster to this point.

Separation of the second and third stages is planned around T+plus 7 minutes, followed seconds later by ignition of the third stage Orion 38 motor. The third stage's 69-second burn will place ICON into a 357-mile-high (575-kilometer) orbit inclined 27 degrees to the equator.

The Pegasus rocket will release the 634-pound (288-kilogram) ICON spacecraft from its third stage at T+plus 11 minutes, 20 seconds. ICON will start extending its power-generating solar panels less than two minutes after deployment from the Pegasus rocket, then lock onto the sun to start charging its batteries.

ICON carries no rocket thrusters of its own, so an on-target deployment by the Pegasus rocket is critical to the mission's success. After checkouts, ICON should begin scientific observations in late November, according to Thomas Immel, the mission's principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.

Like the Pegasus rocket, the ICON satellite was built by Northrop Grumman. It's based on the company's LEOStar 2 satellite bus.

Wednesday is shaping up to be a busy day for Northrop Grumman. Two commercial satellites built by the aerospace contractor were set to launch aboard a Proton rocket early Wednesday, and ICON could be the third Northrop Grumman-made spacecraft to launch in less than 24 hours.

Technicians put the ICON satellite in climate-controlled storage while engineers investigated the Pegasus rocket's rudder issues. Teams took ICON out of storage this summer to complete a full health check on the spacecraft. The testing included a deployment test of the satellite's five-panel solar array wing to ensure the mechanisms needed to unfurl the panel were still fully functional.

NASA selected Immel's proposal for the agency's Explorer program in 2013 to probe the extreme variability of the ionosphere, ever-changing layer in the upper atmosphere that affects long-distance radio communications and GPS navigation.


Artist's concept of the ICON satellite in orbit. Credit: NASA

The ICON mission will investigate the link between conditions in the ionosphere, which scientists long thought was primarily driven by solar activity, and weather deeper in Earth's atmosphere.

"The ionosphere is the densest plasma in space between us and the sun, and that plasma has a number of effects on systems that we use every day," Immel said.

The ICON mission will study "how weather in our lower atmosphere, the weather we experience from day to day, influences conditions in space," he said. "This coupling of the lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere is a new science topic for NASA."

Previous satellite missions detected the unexpected coupling between plasma waves and winds in the ionosphere and terrestrial weather systems.

"What we discovered, using data from a NASA mission called IMAGE, was that this region of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere was actually responding to effects related to weather systems near Earth's surface," said Scott England, ICON project scientist based at Virginia Tech. "This was really unexpected at the time, to see a connection. Wh ere the charged particles were, how many there were, how dense the gas was — they were responding to weather patterns near the surface of the Earth."

"We saw with those missions that the density in the ionosphere varied in response to changes in the rainy seasons in the tropics," Immel said. "The new mission of ICON is to focus on that topic, and we're carrying the instruments to invesitgate that region.

"We think focusing on that will give us a real key to understanding and making better predictions for space weather," he said.

ICON carries four types of instruments developed at the University of California, Berkeley, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the University of Texas at Dallas.

Another NASA mission named GOLD — short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk — has objectives that intersect with ICON's planned observations.

GOLD is mounted on a geostationary satellite more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator, providing wide-area views of the airglow in the ionosphere.

"ICON is going to come along and provide those in situ measurements, flying right through some of those plasma bubbles that we've been imaging with GOLD for a year now," Fox said.

If ICON had launched on its original schedule, it would have been in space before GOLD.

"There has been a two-year delay," Fox said. "We have learned a little bit more science. We now have a year's worth of GOLD images, so I think, if anything, we're even more excited about what ICON is going to bring to us."

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Прогноз погоды L-1 на 10 октября (UTC)

L-1 Pegasus



Пусковой день   (10.10) - = 30 % GO
Резервный день (11.10) - ↑ 70 % GO

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/10/09/pegasus-xl-icon-mission-status-center-2/

10/09/2019 18:37 Stephen Clark

The latest official weather forecast issued by the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron continues to predict a 70 percent probability of unfavorable weather for launch this evening.

"A weak surface trough continues to affect the Florida peninsula this morning," the range weather team wrote in this morning's forecast. "It will move slowly southward across central Florida today and then off the southern part of the peninsula overnight into Thursday. The atmosphere remains moist and unstable which will result in numerous showers and widely scattered thunderstorms to redevelop during the late morning and afternoon hours.

"Precipitation chances will diminish through the evening but there will still be the possibility of precipitation during the count. The primary concerns for violation are the lightning and cumulus cloud rules."

Tonight's 90-minute launch window opens at 9:25 p.m. EDT (0125 GMT). Northrop Grumman's L-1011 carrier jet is expected to drop the 57-foot-long (17-meter) solid-fueled Pegasus XL rocket around 9:30 p.m. EDT, weather permitting.



Ground crews at the Skid Strip airfield will begin launch day preparations Wednesday afternoon. The final hands-on tasks on the Pegasus rocket include the removal of safety pins from the launcher's ordnance devices, and the installation of a door on the rocket's payload shroud after checks of internal batteries.

The launch team will begin steps in the Pegasus pre-launch checklist shortly after 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). After starting its engines, the L-1011 carrier aircraft will taxi to the Skid Strip runway for takeoff toward the planned drop point more than 100 miles east-northeast of Cape Canaveral.

The L-1011 carrier jet, a converted airliner previously owned by Air Canada, will head east, then turn around and fly west through the drop box to assess weather conditions. The "race track" pattern will culminate in a final turn to place the carrier aircraft on an easterly heading at an altitude of 39,000 feet (11,900 meters) and an airspeed of Mach 0.82, according to Don Walter, the L-1011's command pilot.

A four-man flight crew and three Pegasus launch vehicle operators will be aboard the L-1011 during the ICON launch.

In the final minute before launch, the Pegasus rocket will sweep its fins to verify their readiness before Steve Gunn, Walter's co-pilot, pushes a button to command release of the launch vehicle.

Hooks will open to allow the Pegasus to free fall for five seconds to a distance of several hundred feet below the L-1011, before the solid-fueled first stage motor fires to begin the climb into space.

"You lose 52,000 pounds (23,600 kilograms) all at once," Walter said. "The airplane wants to go up. It's kind of like a ride at Disneyland, which is a good thing for us. When that rocket lights off, we want to be a long way away."

The Pegasus XL's Orion 50S XL first stage motor will ignite and ramp up to 163,000 pounds of thrust, and the rocket will pitch upward to gain altitude in front of the carrier jet as Walter steers the aircraft awards from the launcher's exhaust plume.



The first stage will burn out at T+plus 1 minute, 17 seconds, followed by stage separation around 16 seconds later. An Orion 50 XL motor will fire at an altitude of around 237,000 feet (72.1 kilometers) with around 44,000 pounds of thrust.

The Pegasus will be above the dense lower layers of the atmosphere by T+plus 2 minutes, 10 seconds, at which time the rocket will shed its clamshell-like nose cone to reveal the ICON satellite.

The Orion 50 XL second stage motor will consume all its solid fuel at T+plus 2 minutes, 48 seconds, then begin a four-minute coast phase for the rocket to climb to the targeted altitude for the ICON mission. During this time, the rocket's on-board computer will calculate when it needs to ignite the third stage based on the performance of the booster to this point.

Separation of the second and third stages is planned around T+plus 7 minutes, followed seconds later by ignition of the third stage Orion 38 motor. The third stage's 69-second burn will place ICON into a 357-mile-high (575-kilometer) orbit inclined 27 degrees to the equator.

The Pegasus rocket will release the 634-pound (288-kilogram) ICON spacecraft from its third stage at T+plus 11 minutes, 20 seconds. ICON will start extending its power-generating solar panels less than two minutes after deployment from the Pegasus rocket, then lock onto the sun to start charging its batteries.

[свернуть]

ICON carries no rocket thrusters of its own, so an on-target deployment by the Pegasus rocket is critical to the mission's success. After checkouts, ICON should begin scientific observations in late November, according to Thomas Immel, the mission's principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Задержка 24 часа по погоде

10/09/2019 21:51 Launch delayed to Thursday Stephen Clark

NASA and Northrop Grumman officials have pushed back the launch of a Pegasus XL rocket with a ionospheric research satellite to Thursday due to persistent rain showers over Florida's Coast that show no signs of abating in time for this evening's launch window.

Forecasters predicted poor weather during this evening's 90-minute launch window, which opened at 9:25 p.m. EDT (0125 GMT).

Weather conditions are expected to significantly improve for a launch window Thursday opening at the same time.

There's a 70 percent chance of favorable weather during Thursday's launch window.

William Harwood‏ @cbs_spacenews 4 мин. назад

PegasusXL/ICON: Today's planned flight of an air-launched Pegasus XL booster carrying NASA's ICON ionosphere research satellite has been delayed 24 hours due to expected bad weather in the Atlantic Ocean "drop box;" launch retargeted for Thursday at 9:30pm EDT

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https://blogs.nasa.gov/icon/2019/10/09/icon-launch-moved-back-24-hours/

ICON Launch Moved Back 24 Hours

James Cawley


Due to weather in the area, NASA and Northrop Grumman have decided to move the Pegasus XL and ICON launch 24-hours to October 10 at 9:30 p.m., with takeoff of the Stargazer L-1011 at 8:32 p.m.

NASA's live broadcast will begin tomorrow at 9:15 p.m. on www.nasa.gov/live.

The teams are not working any issues.  The rocket, airplane and spacecraft are ready to launch tomorrow.  As always, safety of the crew and mission success are our main focus.

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https://www.interfax.ru/world/679794

04:52, 10 октября 2019
НАСА на сутки отложило запуск спутника ICON из-за неблагоприятной погоды

Москва. 10 октября. INTERFAX.RU - Запуск спутника ICON, предназначенного для изучения земной ионосферы, перенесен на сутки в связи с неблагоприятной погодой в районе мыса Канаверал, сообщило Национальное управление США по аэронавтике и исследованию космического пространства (НАСА).

Теперь воздушный старт крылатой ракеты легкого класса корпорации Northrop Grumman со спутником NASA планируется совершить с самолета-носителя L-1011 Stargazer в 21:30 в четверг по восточноамериканскому времени (04:30 в пятницу по Москве). Самолет, с которого будет осуществлен пуск ракеты над Атлантикой, поднимется с авиабазы на мысе Канаверал в штате Флорида.

Отделение ракеты со спутником от самолета-носителя должно произойти на высоте около 12 км. Затем ракета должна будет вывести спутник ICON на орбиту высотой около 580 км.

Задачей 287-килограммового спутника НАСА, который будет работать на орбите не менее двух лет, будет заключаться в отслеживании изменений в верхних слоях атмосферы, происходящих под действием солнечной активности. Он будет наблюдать за взаимодействием термосферы и ионосферы Земли. Собранные им данные должны помочь ученым лучше разобраться в эффектах, которые космическая погода оказывает на системы связи, навигации и на космические аппараты.

По оценкам, общая стоимость проекта ICON составляет $252 млн.

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Прогноз погоды L-1 на 11 октября (UTC)

L-1 Pegasus



Пусковой день    (11.10) - = 70 % GO
Резервный день (12.10) -    90 % GO

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 NASA Sun & Space‏ @NASASun 22 ч. назад

Now on Thursday, Oct. 10 —

8:32pm ET: Stargazer airplane takes off

9:15pm ET: @NASA TV coverage of launch begins at http://nasa.gov/live

9:30pm ET: Launch!

(0:07)

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https://blogs.nasa.gov/icon/2019/10/10/teams-prepare-for-icon-launch-tonight/
https://blogs.nasa.gov/kennedy/2019/10/10/teams-prepare-for-icon-launch-tonight/

Teams Prepare for ICON Launch Tonight

Anna Heiney
Posted Oct 10, 2019 at 2:05 pm


Northrop Grumman's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft has arrived at the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Oct. 1, 2019. The company's Pegasus XL rocket, containing NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), is attached beneath the aircraft. ICON will study the frontier of space – the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) will launch tonight on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket from the company's Stargazer L-1011 aircraft. The Stargazer will take off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8:33 p.m. EDT.

The first launch attempt for ICON is 9:30 p.m. EDT. Follow live coverage here on the blog as well as on NASA TV and on the web at http://nasa.gov/live beginning at 9:15 p.m. EDT.

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https://www.militarynews.ru/story.asp?rid=1&nid=519116&lang=RU

На орбиту стартует американская ракета со спутником ICON для изучения ионосферы - NASA
11.10.2019 0:29:08

Вашингтон. 11 октября. ИНТЕРФАКС - Американская ракета-носитель Pegasus XL в пятницу утром по московскому времени должна стартовать на орбиту со спутником ICON, который предназначен для изучения земной ионосферы, сообщило Национальное управление США по аэронавтике и исследованию космического пространства (NASA).

Воздушный старт крылатой ракеты легкого класса корпорации Northrop Grumman со спутником NASA должен быть осуществлен с самолета-носителя L-1011 Stargazer в 21:30 в четверг по восточноамериканскому времени (04:30 мск в пятницу). Самолет, с которого будет совершен пуск ракеты над Атлантикой, поднимется с авиабазы на мысе Канаверал в штате Флорида.

Запуск первоначально планировался сутками ранее, но был перенесен на 24 часа из-за неблагоприятных погодных условий в районе мыса Канаверал.

Отделение ракеты со спутником от самолета-носителя должно произойти на высоте около 12 км. Затем ракета должна будет вывести спутник ICON на орбиту высотой около 580 км.

Задачей 287-килограммового спутника NASA, который будет работать на орбите не менее двух лет, будет заключаться в отслеживании изменений в верхних слоях атмосферы, происходящих под действием солнечной активности. Он будет наблюдать за взаимодействием термосферы и ионосферы Земли. Собранные им данные должны помочь ученым лучше разобраться в эффектах, которые космическая погода оказывает на системы связи, навигации и на космические аппараты.

По оценкам, общая стоимость проекта ICON составляет $252 млн.

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10/11/2019 01:25 Stephen Clark

An updated forecast from the Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron predicts an 80 percent chance of acceptable weather during tonight's Pegasus launch window, which opens at 9:25 p.m. EDT (0125 GMT).

Drop of the Pegasus rocket over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral is planned at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT).

Launch preparations at the Pegasus "hotpad" at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Skid Strip airfield are proceeding this evening. Takeoff of the L-1011 carrier aircraft with the Pegasus rocket under its belly is planned at 8:33 p.m. EDT (0033 GMT).

The final hands-on tasks on the rocket include the removal of safety pins from the Pegasus's pyrotechnic ordnance devices, and the installation of a door on the rocket's payload fairing before takeoff of the L-1011.

The primary weather concern this evening is with precipitation. Light rain showers are streaming onshore around Cape Canaveral from the northeast, and flight rules prohibit the L-1011 from flying through precipitation with the Pegasus rocket attached during a launch countdown.

But conditions are much improved from yesterday, when widespread rainfall affected Florida's Space Coast.

"This trend is expected to continue as the drier air continues to move across the Space Coast area. Any precipitation that occurs at the Skid Strip will likely be light in nature and brief in duration. The primary weather concern for violation is precipitation.

"Should there be a 24-hour delay, the drier air will continue to erode the potential for precipitation and will become even more widely spread across the area. The primary weather concern (Friday night) is precipitation.

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10/11/2019 02:19 Stephen Clark

All weather criteria are currently acceptable for takeoff of the Pegasus rocket's L-1011 carrier jet at 8:33 p.m. EDT (0033 GMT) from Cape Canaveral's Skid Strip airfield. But rain showers are in the area.

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10/11/2019 03:17 Stephen Clark

The L-1011 aircraft has begun to taxi away from its "hot pad" staging area in preparation for takeoff

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 Spaceflight Now‏ @SpaceflightNow 3 мин. назад

The Pegasus launch team is "go" for departure of the L-1011 carrier aircraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8:31pm EDT (0031 GMT). Drop time remains set for 9:30pm EDT (0130 GMT) to carry NASA's ICON ionospheric research satellite into orbit. https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/10/09/pegasus-xl-icon-mission-status-center-2/ ...

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https://blogs.nasa.gov/icon/2019/10/10/stargazer-preparing-for-takeoff/

Stargazer Preparing for Takeoff

Danielle Sempsrott
Posted Oct 10, 2019 at 8:20 pm


Northrop Grumman's L-1011 aircraft, Stargazer, prepares for takeoff at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip in Florida on Oct. 10, 2019. Attached beneath the aircraft is the company's Pegasus XL rocket, carrying NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON). Photo credit: NASA

Stargazer's engines have powered up on the Skid Strip runway at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Takeoff is scheduled for 8:33 p.m. EDT. Stick with us here on the blog for live updates.

10/11/2019 03:28 Stephen Clark

All stations reported a "go" for departure of the L-1011 carrier aircraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with Air Force, NASA and Northrop Grumman officials voicing approval for takeoff.