I did not know that there is a NASA rocket launch center on Wallops Island in Virginia towards the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. Compared with Cape Canaveral that is practically in my backyard. How did I not know about it and not visit it on the way to all those trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina?Nevertheless the rocket launch of an Air Force satellite scheduled for last night was postponed until tonight. You can follow the status here, and watch video and webcast here and twitter feed here. I am going to keep updated and sometime between 8pm and 11pm tonight I will go out and look south to see if I can see the rocket achieve orbit. I doubt I will see anything since it is about 160 miles due south of me. I also expect the rocket to take off towards the east to get the benefit of the Earth's rotation.
I must visit during a launch someday. I saw the Shuttle takeoff in February and see the next one getting ready, but that was a lucky happenstance - the last launch was delayed to the date of my trip, which would have been too early for the next launch. This one would be easier to get to.
Can you imagine an alternate reality where this launch facility was the one where they decided to do manned flight from instead of Kennedy Space Center. How cool would it be to have the Shuttle launch from Virginia. Apparently this site has the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport or MARS, and its first commercial launch was in 2006 (Spaceport website), which might explain why I hadn't heard of it, though it has been around doing rocket testing since the 40's.
10 comments:
It's 9:07pm and they are on hold at 50 minutes while they fix and issue with the launch support equipment. You can here the team discuss the weather not hitting until the end of their launch window, it sounds like they want to launch tonight.
Problem fixed, launch appears to be go for about 10:40 pm. At -31 minutes at 10:08pm. I amy go outside to see if I can see this thing.
There will be a hold at 20 minutes to collect the 90 minutes data from a balloon launched earlier to measure high altitude winds. How cool is that!
Launch in 20 minutes.
A lot of go's on the webcast as all stations report go.
Sudden Hold at -2:13. I am outside hoping against all odds to see this.
Abort?
Sounds like a scrub. They are returning the gantry over the vehicle.
That was a bust, better luck next time.
At least I know my Wifi reaches several 100ft down the street, streaming video, blog and twitter updates and all. And the Verizon FIOS guy was worried that the wireless router was in the wrong room of my house.
Good Night.
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