NPP Launch Slips Two Days
Launch of NASA’s NPP earth observing satellite has slipped to October 27 from October 25.
NASA’s Expendable Launch Vehicle report cites two issues with the Delta 2 rocket as the reason for the delay. A “small crack in a hydraulic tube” caused a leak that has already been repaired and retested. A “flexible fabric collar” also had to be replaced that connects two engine exhaust ducts. That work is underway.
NPP was designed to test new technologies for the since-cancelled National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Its official name is the NPOESS Preparatory Project, but that has been overtaken by events. With the dissolution of the NPOESS project, NPP now will have to serve as an operational weather satellite in NOAA’s polar-orbiting constellation. NOAA’s next polar-orbiting satellite, the first of the new Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), is not expected to be launched until 2016 or 2017. NOAA has repeatedly warned Congress of a potential gap in polar-orbiting weather satellite coverage if sufficient funds are not provide for the JPSS program. The last of NOAA’s legacy polar-orbiting satellites, NOAA-19, was launched in 2009.
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