Thank Alex....

they fuel on Thursday then the launch attempts are committed.

Just REALLY want o see this baby GO...... being an old timer, just wanna see a true ion drive in action... like Deep Space One.... feel we have been stuck in the chemical propulsion arena for way too long.

Craig

Right on! GO DAWN!!! Here's to a spotless LRR...and, selfishly, an empty pad to clear the way for Phoenix, the next Shuttle launch, and one of my birds scheduled to go up on 11 Aug... ...getting kind of tight down there over the next few weeks.

They have given the go to fuel the second stage.

According to NASA PAO, they have the 7-9th, stand down, and then the 15-19th which is a new surprise (if correct). I haven't heard any more on that. They said they discussed the Phoenix conflict today in addition to the range issue and weather.

60% wx violation on Saturday and 70% Sunday right now.

Just checked on Yahoo.com... The weather in Florida on July 13 calls for mostly sunny weather and 10% precipitation. Why the 6-day stand down?

Assuming all goes well for DAWN, Astronomy Now has reported that a "leisurely" Pallas flyby is possible after Ceres. It would indeed be really cool to sample the "big three" with one mission. In case this comes to pass (and if not, it will at least provide an interesting comparison with the other recently released images), Charles Russell, DAWN's principle investigator, will be using Hubble sometime between Sep 1, 2007 and Sep 5, 2007 to study Pallas with WFPC/2 (too bad ACS HRC is dead).

http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/proposal_...amp;mission=hst

http://www.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/get-visit-sta...rkupFormat=html

loading second stage prop has slipped a day. You can draw your own conclusions

Based on what? Why did it slip?

I'm going to go for Alligator chewing the nozzle of a GEM.

Without any more info - it's the best I can do

Doug

If this were a V2 rocket I'd say someone drank all the fuel, but hydrazine is a bit too much even for those who really can take their liquor...

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/

24 hours. The thing with the dates appears to be true, but still no explanation as to why they can suddenly work the 15-19 without a Mars delay that I've seen.

Was just about to cite the same source..

"A mismatch between temperatures inside the rocket's nose cone and the second stage caused the vehicle to be a bit too warm for the fueling process to begin at launch pad 17B this morning, a NASA spokesperson explained. The temperatures are being adjusted today in hopes of starting the oxidizer filling later this afternoon." from www.spaceflightnow.com

I did not find the article in Astronomy Now. What were the constraints on the asteroid selection? What other asteroids were considered besides Pallas?

At a glance, Pallas has a high inclination and would be difficult to get to if it is out of the same plane as Ceres in the post-Ceres timeframe. It is of similar (but not identical) spectral type as Ceres. Were other spectral types under consideration? S and C-types have or will have had flybys. Rosetta will flyby 21 Lutetia, an M-type. Vesta is atypical. It would be good to look at something not seen before at close range.

*ALL* of the "big-4" asteroids will be interesting and different from anything else. Pallas and Juno, as I recall, have somewhat atypical spectra, again indicating large-body processes or special conditions.

While itsy-bitsy 3-5 km asteroids may not be as spectacular as one of the big-boys, they probably will tend to have relatively fresh, non-space-weathered regoliths and perhaps (statistically) more chance to show what they are actually made of, and what the structure of the bodies they are pieces of were.. perhaps. Gaspra, Ida, etc, were more than a bit enigmatic.

Another 24 hr delay

I'm told they are going to hold a meeting later today and reassess the plan for July and what dates they would have. Fueling of the second stage has not happened yet.

KSC is saying that all options are on the table and that the blackout from the 10th to 15th is not definite. They will asses the availability of the range aircraft vs ship, see how many days they can try, etc and make a decision today or tomorrow.

Damn. What exactly is driving this latest slip, support asset availability as you described?

EDIT: Sorry, never mind; problem with a tracking aircraft. I need to learn how to click on links & read before asking silly questions on the board...

If the problems keep mounting, the mission should be renamed this. All it would require is inverting the "w."

...well, all we can hope for is that its full name will someday be "The Best Damn Asteroid Mission, Period!"

Chances of acceptable weather on Tuesday (7/10) if Dawn can't get off on Monday: 70%... According to Floridatoday.com

Here's hoping NASA will extend the launch window by this just one day to increase Dawn's chances of getting the heck off the ground. Forget Phoenix...what with that MARDI foul-up and all. J/k.

Hate to be the informer but its NET July 15 now. I have a feeling...

Jeez, this is turning from bad to rotten, quickly. I wonder if Ed "The Axe" Weiler were still running SMD whether he would be close to saying, "Take it off the pad and ship it to NASM."

Here is the latest just in on the July 15 launch target from spaceflightnow.com

------

FRIDAY, JULY 6, 2007
2355 GMT (7:55 p.m. EDT)

ANOTHER DELAY. The Dawn asteroid exploration mission won't be launching before Sunday, July 15, NASA officials announced Friday evening after extensive decisions about the availability of downrange tracking assets and the overall readiness to go fly.

The United Launch Alliance Delta 2-Heavy rocket stands fully assembled with Dawn nestled inside the vehicle's nose cone at Cape Canaveral's pad 17B.

But this is the third delay in the past two days for the launch. Stormy weather prevented the Delta 2 rocket's second stage from being fueled on Thursday, forcing the liftoff to be delayed from Saturday to Sunday. NASA decided early Friday morning to slip the launch another 24 hours - to Monday - because of troubles with a telemetry-relay aircraft.

Problems with the tracking plane and delays getting a substitute ship into the Atlantic Ocean region has been a source of headaches for the launch officials. Either the aircraft or the instrumented ship is required to receive telemetry from the rocket during the second and third stage firings off the west-central coast of Africa. Without a mobile tracking asset in place, engineers would have no insight or data while those critical events of the launch occur.

NASA is racing against the calendar because Dawn's current launch opportunity closes July 19, giving just a few days left to get the spacecraft on the required trajectory to fly past Mars for a sling-shot maneuver and then into the asteroid belt for its rendezvous with Vesta and Ceres over the next eight years.

If this period is missed, another one opens in September and extends through late October.

What impact, if any, this latest delay could have to the planned August 3 launch of the Mars lander Phoenix aboard another Delta 2 rocket from the neighboring pad is not immediately clear. The alignment of the planets dictates a tight August 3 to August 24 window for the Phoenix liftoff to happen.

The start of Dawn's mission to examine up close two of the solar system's largest asteroids has been hit by a number of setbacks, including outright cancellation of the project in March 2006. After a heated controversy, NASA restarted the mission less than a month later.

Plans called for the launch to happen June 20, but that date was scrapped because more time was needed to prepare the Delta rocket before on-pad assembly could start. Then a targeted June 30 launch day was doomed when the pad's crane developed a problem last month, causing a hiatus in attaching the solid-fuel boosters.

Launch on July 15 would be possible during a window stretching from 3:22 to 3:54 p.m. EDT.

AFAIK all delays from June 20th onwards have nothing to do with the spacecraft itself but with the launch vehicle or support equipment (tracking assets, crane etc.). I repeat myself with saying this isn't only bad luck but also a lack of planning, contincency planning, lack of strategy etc.

Analyst

Anyone who has read and understood Jim's posts can see why the situation is as it is - and given the resources available, no ammount of contingency or planning could have avoided it.

Doug

Not so. You have no clue what is going on. No amount of planning would have avoided these "things" and allowed Dawn to launch any earlier. The strategy is to launch Dawn ASAP

1. Crane. Crap happens. No amount of planning would avoid this
2. TM airplane upon returning from depot maintenance experiences a delamination of an aileron
3. TM airplane experiences failure in mission equipment
4. TM ship experiences stronger currents than planned
5. weather

A. TM airplane is owned by the Army and supports many users, most with higher priorities
B. The TM equipment is owned by the USAF and the boat is chartered.
C. NASA "contracts" both for assets, but they managed by their owning org, NASA just requests where they are needed and when. How they get their is determined by the owning org.


Let's see you put together a decision matrix to take all this into account. Meanwhile, spacecraft contractor is charging for the delays and ULA is charging for the delays (TM is a NASA requirement).

Yeow. Sounds horribly familiar, Jim, and I agree with you. The only thing in your list that makes me mad is that delaminated aileron; that definitely should have been caught & fixed by the Depot contractor, and I hope NASA/DCMA(?) is raising hell with them about it...pretty shoddy.

Come to that, though, most planes need at least two weeks to shake out problems after coming out of Depot; pity there apparently isn't enough asset depth to permit this to happen & it had to fly a hot mission so soon.

I blame everything that's happened on gremlins.

It is not NASA's plane.

It's off till September officially. :-(

Since they didn't fuel the second stage, I gather (based on the press conference) that they will have a longer September window than if they had been forced to find a new second stage. That's a (very) small sliver lining.

TTT

I believe the September window (planetary window) opens Sept. 7. I might be wrong though.

All...

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jul/H...stpone_Sep.html

"NASA will hold a news briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, July 9, to preview the launch of the Phoenix Mars Lander. Prior to the Phoenix presentations, media will have the opportunity to learn in more detail about the rescheduled Dawn launch.[i][u] The briefing will originate from the NASA Headquarters auditorium, 300 E St., S.W., Washington. It will air live on NASA Television and be streamed online at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv"

Craig

SFN story:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d325/070707delay.html

(sigh)...

Florida Today's blog reports "late September" window opening. Since they did not give out a date, it might be dependent on when Phoenix gets off the ground. There is also a GPS satellite due to launch in September from 17, so they might have some things to rework (I think GPS was going to be pad B originally, maybe not anymore).

Yep. Gotta make sure Phoenix launches in time so it can make its May 2008 collision with the Martian surface. J/k.

The whole sorry list of excuses involving the range problems simply shows how badly range capabilities have deteoriated (I believe there were congressional hearings on it a few years ago!), and how fragile currently obsolescent systems are to the lack of redundancy, etc.

The "NewSpace" companies like SpaceX are flying innovative capabilities while things like Delta-II are flying what's probably cannot-purchase-new-if-you-wanted-it-now capabilities, and we're at their mercy.

(Query: How was Falcon's flight telemetry and video transmitted and relayed?... Kwaj range resources, or what?)

The range capabilities have not "deteoriated ". The Eastern Range never had the capability to support these requirements. Outside agencies (ARIA, etc) were always brought in to fill the holes. This is an mostly issue for planetary missions, the earth escape burns are scattered all over the globe and there is never a fixed TM site near by. Also NASA has the requirement to monitor every engine burn, which wasn't always in effect in past years

2. Not true. Spacex would have the same issues. It used standard range resources. Spacex might not have the same TM requirements. NASA has the requirement to monitor every engine burn. And NASA bought the Delta II's as is

TDRSS is the fix but the design of the Delta II would require 2 transmitters, one for the 2nd stage and one for the 3rd. This adds more $$$ and less payload mass. There is resistant to add the capability (Delta IV and Atlas V have them) and rightly so, since the Delta II line will end so

I have to admit that after being internet-less for a wedding this weekend, I find the events here confusing, more so by the muddled reporting from various news sources.

What happened to trying today or next week? Did the plane's wings fall off or something?

Maybe this will help...
http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/0709_Ea...awn_Launch.html

--Emily

Interesting gamble: Risk $5m to save $20m, if an early launch can be pulled off.

From the discussion on this board, isn't it clear factors other than weather were important in delaying the launch prior to the final 3-day window?

I just want to clarify. Both Dawn's and Phoenix's rockets are already stacked. The problem is not that you cannot launch on one pad while there is a rocket on the other; they do that all the time. What they don't do is launch while a spacecraft is on the other pad. Dawn itself will be removed, but its rocket will remain. Likewise, Dawn would have launched with Phoenix's Delta on the opposite pad, but not Phoenix itself, which would have waited for Dawn to go and the pad to be cleaned up before being mounted atop.

Woops, I misunderstood. I've made various changes to the article to correct this. Thanks, Ben.

--Emily

No problem just want to help :-)

It looks like Sept. 7th is indeed the opening of the window with a launch in the morning (9am-ish maybe).

Wonder why Jim Green refused to be at all specific on the date that the period opens during the press conference.

--Emily

It may be true that if Phoenix doesn't get off till late in the window, they can't get Dawn up in time for Sept. 7. But I don't know. Florida Today has a quote in their blog today saying "Sept. 7 to about Oct. 17."

http://floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/sect...category=news02

"...The range capabilities have not "deteoriated ". The Eastern Range never had the capability to support these requirements..."

I'd have to dig in buried boxes containing Aviation Weeks and Space Newses and internet printouts to find the materials on range problems and I can't for some months to be able to back up my overall allegation-from-memory of range problems. On the specific interplay of problems here, I'll have to take your info as based on much more accurate specifics than my generalized and faded memory of old articles.

Only Apollo placed ships and aircraft to monitor all burns. ELV's never had the luxury. ARIA went away because there weren't enough users

How does this slip change the mission profile (e.g. arrival dates, potential mission extensions)?