A ship, which was to replace the ailing plane, had not reached its correct destination so that the launch of the asteroid mission could be cleared.  Either the airplane or the ship is needed in order to track the spacecraft after it launches from NASA’s base in Florida.

On Thursday, lightning over the skies of east-central Florida postponed Saturday’s launch of NASA’s Dawn mission to the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta.

The mission had problems even before the bad weather occurred. The fueling of the second-stage rocket, which will launch Dawn to the dwarf planet and asteroid, had been delayed due to hot conditions on the exterior payload walls of the rocket (its fairing), which prevented the super-cold oxidizer propellant from being loaded.

Even if NASA had been able to launch on Sunday, July 8, 2007, the day held little promise of better weather as forecasters are predicting a likely chance for more bad weather.

NASA now has set Monday afternoon (July 9, 2007) as its next launch target. The specific window for launch is 3:56 p.m. to 4:26 p.m. EDT. (1956 to 2026 GMT)

NASA has until July 11th to launch the spacecraft in order to avoid launch conflicts with an August 3rd mission to Mars (Mars Phoenix lander) and the next Space Shuttle mission (STS-118) with Endeavour and its astronaut crew heading to the International Space Station on August 7th.

In addition, NASA must launch the mission by the end of October, at which time the two bodies that the Dawn spacecraft will visit—dwarf planet Ceres and asteroid Vesta—will begin to drift apart. They will not be this close together for another fifteen years.

Dawn is expected to fly past Vesta in October 2011 in order to investigate its lava flows, which may help answer how it was initially formed. Later, in February 2005, Dawn will rendezvous with the dwarf planet Ceres.

For more information on NASA’s ion powered Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta, go to the iTWire article titled “NASA’s Dawn mission to asteroids powered with high-tech ion drive”.

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