NEWS

Global Warming Satellite to Launch Tuesday

02/23/2009

After a five-year absence, the Taurus XL rocket will return to Vandenberg Air Force Base for a NASA mission to measure the chief culprit of global warming.

The eighth Taurus, which is built by Orbital Sciences Corp., is set for an early-morning departure Tuesday from Space Launch Complex 576-E, near the Delta 2 pad, Space Launch Complex-2.

Liftoff is targeting a launch window of slightly more than four minutes that opens at

1:51 a.m. Tuesday, a day later than planned because the team fell behind in some pre-launch chores last weekend.

Crews worked steadily last Wednesday to finish stacking the Taurus’ top three stages plus the nose cone, with the satellite tucked safely inside, atop the lower stage of the rocket.

Friday, the team successfully performed a combined systems check to ensure no problems remain.

“That’s really the last major test before launch,” said NASA spokesman George Diller.

A launch readiness review was held Sunday afternoon, where managers gave permission to begin the countdown. The weather forecast calls for an 80 percent likelihood that conditions will allow the launch to occur, Diller said Sunday afternoon.

This is NASA’s second mission of the month from Vandenberg, following on the heels of a Delta 2 launch that carried a weather satellite into orbit on Feb. 6.

Taurus will carry the

992-pound Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) for a $273 million mission designed to last two years.

NASA says OCO is the first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, “the most significant human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change.”

“This experimental NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Program mission will measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space, mapping the globe once every 16 days for at least two years,” NASA said.

A sibling to Orbital Sciences Corp.‘s air-launched Pegasus rocket, Taurus is a ground-launched booster that uses a bare-bones launch pad. The site includes a stand that sits on a concrete pad, but lacks the mobile service tower of other traditional launch facilities that protect the rocket from inclement weather.

The four-stage Taurus rocket can take satellites weighing up to 3,000 pounds to orbit.

Since its inaugural launch in 1994, Taurus has six successful missions and one failure. So far, all the launches have occurred at Vandenberg, but the booster is approved for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.; Wallops Flight Facility, Va.; and Kodiak Launch Complex, Alaska.