Weather forces Rocket Lab to scrub first launch from Wallops
High altitude winds yesterday forced Rocket Lab to scrub its first Electron launch attempt from Wallops Island in Virginia yesterday.
The weather also forced the company to cancel a launch attempt today.
Teams are now evaluating the next possible launch window while coordinating with holiday travel airspace restrictions. The flight will lift off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-2 (LC-2) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
This could mean that Rocket Lab will not be able to launch before the end of the year. The company very much wishes to do this, however, as it would give it ten launches in 2022, as well as a launch pace of one per month for most of the year.
This first launch from Wallops is also important, as it would give Rocket Lab three launchpads, including one in the U.S. for launching classified military payloads. It had hoped to launch from Wallops two years ago, but red tape at NASA delayed the launch.
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High altitude winds yesterday forced Rocket Lab to scrub its first Electron launch attempt from Wallops Island in Virginia yesterday.
The weather also forced the company to cancel a launch attempt today.
Teams are now evaluating the next possible launch window while coordinating with holiday travel airspace restrictions. The flight will lift off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-2 (LC-2) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
This could mean that Rocket Lab will not be able to launch before the end of the year. The company very much wishes to do this, however, as it would give it ten launches in 2022, as well as a launch pace of one per month for most of the year.
This first launch from Wallops is also important, as it would give Rocket Lab three launchpads, including one in the U.S. for launching classified military payloads. It had hoped to launch from Wallops two years ago, but red tape at NASA delayed the launch.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
From what I’ve ready elsewhere, NASA required that Rocket Lab have an AFTS system compliant with the Wallops range, and with capabilities on par with what they are using at Mahia, and that SpaceX and ULA are using at the cape. Not an unreasonable demand. And NASA didn’t drag their feat on certifying it once it was produced. What ate a chunk of the time was that Rocket Labs’ existing system wouldn’t work with the Wallops range, and the sample template software NASA provided them was apparently complete garbage, and that cost Rocket Lab several months before they dumped it and started from their own base.
Big storm supposed to hit the East Coast this week will probably push any launch attempt into the week after Christmas