NASA's CloudSat and CALIPSO Launch Rescheduled for April 25

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., April 24, 2006/Satnews Daily/ —  The launch of NASA's CloudSat and CALIPSO mission has been rescheduled until Tuesday morning after a refueling aircraft for the radar tracking plane was unavailable Sunday morning.

NASA said liftoff is scheduled for 6:02 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

The launch of NASA's CloudSat and CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations) satellites was earlier scheduled for Friday, April 21, but was rescheduled for Saturday, April 22. But later, NASA said the launch will take place instead on Tuesday.

The Saturday launch was scrubbed at T-48 seconds due to loss of the primary and backup phone communications between the Mission Directors Center at Vandenberg and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales Space Command in Toulouse, France. The communications loss is being evaluated, according to NASA.

CALIPSO and CloudSat are flying into space aboard Boeing Delta II rocket. With more than 300 successful flights, the dual-stage Delta II is NASA's medium-size payload specialist.

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