Mars Orbiter Launch Delayed

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @04:23AM from the waiting-for-major-tom dept.

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."

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Re:Hopefully Thursday by Ironsides · 2005-08-10 04:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

Oddly enough, the Atlas V acually uses Russian engines in the 1st stage. Ironic for a rocket that was originally an ICBM.

One thing I've always wanted to seen done. Take all the US and Russian engineers, put them together, give them a blank check and the goal of colonizing space along with permission to use any and all knowlege (including classified) that they posses. And just wait to see how long it is until I'm living in orbit.

--
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars