If it goes ahead as planned, Friday’s test launch will be uncrewed. The capsule will circle the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California. It will be recovered by Nasa and the US Navy.
The first attempt to launch the mission on Thursday was plagued by technical and weather problems. Mission control eventually postponed the launch by 24 hours.
One of the problems that delayed the initial launch was the appearance of a boat in the restricted area of the Atlantic, off the coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral. Strong gusts also triggered several automatic aborts as the wind speed rose above 20 knots (about the speed of the sprinter Usain Bolt).
The mission was finally aborted because of a technical issue in the rocket engine. A number of valves that regulate the flow of liquid hydrogen fuel into three core boosters of the rocket’s first-stage engine failed to close. Normal operation calls for them to remain open during the fuelling and then shut tight a few minutes before liftoff to seal the fuel tank. This did not happen.
Engineers from Lockheed Martin, which built the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle, have been working on the problem since.
“We’re very confident we’re going to be able to exonerate the equipment,” said Dan Collins, chief operating officer of United Launch Alliance.
Preparations for refuelling began on Friday morning around 08:00 GMT. The fuel is a mix of liquid oxygen and hydrogen which is ignited to create the thrust needed to lift the spacecraft into orbit.
source:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/05/nasa-orion-second-launch-attempt-mars-mission
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