The preliminary weather outlook for Thursday night’s Atlas 5 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral is cloudy but optimistic that the vehicle will fly as scheduled.
The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket and NASA’s four MMS satellite probes passed their Flight Readiness Review on Friday that assessed the progress of work and affirmed plans to launch next Thursday night.
NASA’s four Magnetospheric Multiscale mission spacecraft were encapsulated Feb. 23 in the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket’s nose cone at the commercial Astrotech processing campus in Titusville. Delivery of the payload to the Atlas 5 assembly building for mating occurred on Friday, Feb. 27.
During a Feb. 25 briefing at NASA headquarters, details were discussed about the upcoming Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, scheduled for launch March 12 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
A stack of four satellites, each one carrying 25 science sensors and together will perfect the art of formation flying, are being packaged inside an Atlas 5 rocket nose cone in preparation for mounting atop the booster next week.
The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket that will hurl the four MMS satellites into a highly elliptical Earth orbit on March 12 has completed its basic build up at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 Vertical Integration Facility.
The Atlas rocket to launch four formation-flying spacecraft for NASA in March began to take shape Wednesday at the assembly building adjacent to the Complex 41 pad.