spacetoday.net: Minotaur launch delayed

Posted: Mon, Dec 11, 2006, 8:04 AM ET (1304 GMT)
Minotaur launch (OSC)

The launch of military and NASA satellites on a Minotaur rocket from a Virginia spaceport has been postponed, spaceport officials said early Monday. The Minotaur 1 rocket was scheduled to lift off Monday morning at 7 am EST (1200 GMT) from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), but officials said early Monday that the launch had been scrubbed because of a glitch with flight software on the rocket's primary payload, the TacSat-2 spacecraft. The launch will be postponed to no sooner than Wednesday because of the problem, and could be delayed for up to two to three weeks. TacSat-2 is an experimental military satellite designed to test the ability to transmit satellite images directly to forces on the ground within minutes. The rocket is also carrying GeneSat-1, a small NASA satellite that will test the effects of the space environment on a strain of E. coli bacteria. The launch is the first from MARS, a commercial spaceport co-located with NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Delmarva Peninsula. The launch would be the first orbital launch from Wallops, primarily used for sounding rocket flights, in over a decade.