Satellite-Bearing Rocket Set for Liftoff on Va. Coast

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va., Dec. 11 - Air Force and NASA officials scrapped the scheduled launch of a new surveillance satellite Monday morning after technicians found a software glitch that would have left the vehicle without adequate solar power.

The problem was found late Sunday night, delaying what would have been the first launch from the new Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a joint commercial venture funded by Virginia, Maryland and the federal government that has been a decade in the making and could, its creators hope, someday host trips by tourists to space.

A new launch date has not been set. It may take place later this week, but may be postponed for as long as two to three weeks.

Officials said that the software would have misaligned the satellite's solar panels by about 45 degrees.

During an afternoon news briefing here, Air Force officials said they have also found a problem with the satellite's simulator. They said if the problem is limited to the simulator and is resolved, there could be another launch try as early as Thursday morning. If the problem proves more extensive, the launch could be pushed back months, the officials said.

The satellite was to be carried into orbit atop a 69-foot-tall green and white rocket, powered by 70,000 pounds of rubbery rocket fuel. The four-stage Minotaur I, bearing a tactical surveillance satellite for the Air Force and a small science payload for NASA, waited on pad 0-B for its scheduled dawn Monday liftoff over the Atlantic Ocean.

The launch also would have been the first successful take-off from ground to orbit at NASA's historic Wallops Flight facility in more than over 20 years. NASA leases land to the spaceport, which built its own launch pad and 12-story heated gantry.

NASA, which conducts suborbital flights at Wallops and was to provide technical support Monday morning, no longer has pads for orbital launches here and paid the spaceport $621,000 for use of the new facilities, said Ron Walsh, the NASA range and mission project manager.

Officials said the weather forecast for Monday morning was excellent, and the best time for liftoff would have been at the start of the day's 7-to-10 a.m. launch window. Controllers said they expected that same launch window to be available each day through Dec. 20.

The launch, which NASA said could be visible as far away as Washington, 150 miles northwest, requires nearby sea lanes and the busy eastern Virginia airspace to be cleared of traffic, officials said Sunday, as the rocket thunders southeast toward the coast of Africa.

The rocket was built with two former Minuteman ballistic missile engines and two Orbital Sciences Corp. engines. It is set to carry into orbit the Air Force's 814-pound TacSat-2 satellite and NASA's 10-pound GeneSat-1, which is designed to study how bacteria function in space.

The spaceport, whose acronym is MARS, has four full-time employees and a budget of about $580,000 a year, Billie Reed, its director, said here Sunday. It is one of six in the United States that have been licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The others are in California, Florida, Alaska and Oklahoma.

All are hoping to capitalize on a resurgence of the moribund commercial space launch industry that Reed said could eventually include a vibrant tourism component.

"We've been operating on what I call a barebones budget for three years," he said. "A dry time. But now things look good."