Delta launches Genesis spacecraft
Posted: Wed, Aug 8, 2001, 2:32 PM ET (1832 GMT)
A Delta 2 booster successfully launched NASA's Genesis space science spacecraft Wednesday afternoon after over a week of delays. The Delta 2 lifted off from Pad 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:13:40 pm EDT (1613:40 GMT) Wednesday afternoon. Genesis separated from the upper stage of the Delta 64 minutes after launch. The launch, originally scheduled for Monday, July 30, was first delayed two days to review a possible technical concern with the spacecraft's power converters, which later checked out. Weather then delayed launch attempts for the next three days before NASA had to turn the launch range over to the Air Force for Monday's launch of a Titan 4. A last-minute concern did arise Wednesday morning, when engineers reported that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was having problems receiving some software updates uplinked to it. Since both Mars Odyssey and Genesis were built by Lockheed Martin, managers took time to review the issue, but concluded it was not a constraint to launch. Genesis will now travel to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, where it will spend more than two years collecting samples of the solar wind that will be returned to Earth for study in 2004.
A Delta 2 booster successfully launched NASA's Genesis space science spacecraft Wednesday afternoon after over a week of delays. The Delta 2 lifted off from Pad 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:13:40 pm EDT (1613:40 GMT) Wednesday afternoon. Genesis separated from the upper stage of the Delta 64 minutes after launch. The launch, originally scheduled for Monday, July 30, was first delayed two days to review a possible technical concern with the spacecraft's power converters, which later checked out. Weather then delayed launch attempts for the next three days before NASA had to turn the launch range over to the Air Force for Monday's launch of a Titan 4. A last-minute concern did arise Wednesday morning, when engineers reported that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was having problems receiving some software updates uplinked to it. Since both Mars Odyssey and Genesis were built by Lockheed Martin, managers took time to review the issue, but concluded it was not a constraint to launch. Genesis will now travel to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, where it will spend more than two years collecting samples of the solar wind that will be returned to Earth for study in 2004.
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