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Mars Orbiter Launch Delayed
Mictian writes "NASA's newest Mars probe, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), was originally scheduled to be launched from Kennedy Space Center Wednesday morning atop an Atlas 5 rocket. However a potential problem with the Atlas' Redundant Rate Gyro Units (RRGUs), that are part of the vehicle's flight control system, detected at Lockheed Martin's factory has caused the engineers to make sure that the two RRGUs in MRO's rocket are working, thus delaying the launch at least until Thursday morning. There is a 1.5 hour launch window daily until the end of the month."
They are planning on testing the gyro unit today so they can get the launch off Thursday morning.
Oddly enough, the Atlas V acually uses Russian engines in the 1st stage. Ironic for a rocket that was originally an ICBM.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
It takes almost 5 seconds searching the term in the Wikipedia.
Launch window is a term used in aerospace to describe a time period in which a particular rocket must be launched. For trips into Earth orbit almost any time will do, but if the spacecraft intends to rendezvous with another (or a planet, or other point in space) the launch must be carefully timed so that the orbits overlap at some point in the future. If the rocket does not launch in the "window", it has to wait for the next one before it can be launched.