Blog Weather May Push Back Monday’s Falcon 9 Mission

The Air Force says weather conditions look questionable for Monday’s planned launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

Forecasters said Friday that there’s only a 40 percent chance of favorable conditions for the two-hour launch window starting at 2:10 p.m. Tuesday carries a similar forecast.

The rocket will launch the BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite. BulgariaSat 1 will provide direct-to-home television broadcast and data communications services over southeast Europe for Bulsatcom.

 

[Grendal]

The weather wasn't good but a faulty fairing valve did cause a delay. 6/23 or 6/24 is the next possibility.

 

[Electroman]

If there is no rendezvous with another moving space object, then I would tend to think there should be a launch window every day?

So I don't quite understand the need to postpone by several days, unless of course the weather is expected to be bad till then.

 

[Grendal]

If there is no rendezvous with another moving space object, then I would tend to think there should be a launch window every day?

So I don't quite understand the need to postpone by several days, unless of course the weather is expected to be bad till then.

Sometimes it's a coordination thing. You have a lot of agencies that need to come together to allow for a launch to happen. So there is usually a launch date and a backup launch date. Sometimes that is 24 hours. In this case it finalized as Saturday with a backup of Monday. So when Monday was dropped SpaceX had to reset with the various agencies and I'm sure that weather was included in the consideration.

 

[Electroman]

Thank you. So it is not all about technical and orbital mechanics.