Delta IV Heavy Inaugural Launch is on Dec. 21 or 22

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fl, Dec. 20/Satnews Daily/ ¾ Boeing’s Launch Services has announced that the inaugural flight of Boeing's Delta 4 heavy-lift rocket has been tentatively rescheduled for Tuesday, December 21 or Wednesday, Dec. 22.

The two hour and 56 minute (2:56) launch windows open at 2:36 pm EST and close at 5:32 pm EST. The Delta IV Heavy vehicle will be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

he first Delta 4 Heavy has been scrubbed at least two times already in eight days. The launch was postponed Sunday morning of December 12 when technicians reported that an environmental control system suffered an outage after Saturday's launch attempt was scrubbed because of bad weather.

Because crews could not determine the root cause of the failure, Boeing elected to scrub the launch to give engineers more time to understand the problem.

Delta 4’s primary mission is to deliver a test payload, dubbed DemoSat, into orbit. The mission also includes two smaller research satellites, called Nanosat-2, which are attached directly to the DemoSat payload and are designed to be deployed sequentially 16 minutes after launch following second stage cutoff.

The flight is also meant to demonstrate its Earth-to-orbit launch capabilities for the U.S. Air Force, which plans to use the rocket to loft at least two large satellites.

Developed for a period of six years, Delta 4 Heavy rocket is capable of carrying payloads up to 28,124 pounds (12,757 kilograms) into orbit. The DemoSat and two Nanosat-2 satellites together weigh about 13,500 pounds (6,123 kilograms).

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