NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer satellite was scheduled to launch Wednesday aboard an air-dropped Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket over the Atlantic Ocean, but managers aborted the mission after encountering a technical concern with the rocket following departure from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launcher’s L-1011 carrier jet returned to Florida.
Europe’s MetOp-C weather satellite launched aboard a Russian-built Soyuz rocket toward polar orbit Tuesday night from French Guiana, joining an international fleet of meteorological observatories critical for global weather forecasting. Liftoff occurred at 7:47 p.m. EST Tuesday (0047 GMT Wednesday).
The launch of a NASA research satellite built to probe conditions along the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space has been tentatively rescheduled for no earlier than Wednesday, pending the conclusion of a review of unexpected data signatures discovered on the first stage of the mission’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket.
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