LIVE: Delta II - WISE - Dec 14, 09

[Analyst]

Propellant is not an issue. But it is very doubtful there can be any useful science with a "warm" mission. WISE - in contrast to Spitzer - is in Earth orbit (thermal issues) and it is a full sky survey mission, once done, you can improve it only marginally by doing it again and again.

Analyst

[Chris Bergin]

Thanks PR, title changed for new NET.

[jacqmans]

RELEASE: 09-269

NASA'S WISE GETS READY TO SURVEY THE WHOLE SKY

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is
chilled out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA's
newest spacecraft is scheduled to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20,
its last stop before launching into space to survey the entire sky in
infrared light.

Wise is scheduled to launch no earlier than 9:09 a.m. EST on Dec. 9
from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will circle Earth
over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine
months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the
coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

"The eyes of Wise are a vast improvement over those of past infrared
surveys," said Edward "Ned" Wright, the principal investigator for
the mission at UCLA. "We will find millions of objects that have
never been seen before."

The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with
sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than
its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of millions of objects. The
data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing
them to the most interesting targets. NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space
Telescopes, the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory,
and NASA's upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope will follow
up on Wise finds.

"This is an exciting time for space telescopes," said Jon Morse,
NASA's Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "Many of the telescopes will work together, each
contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles
in our universe."

Visible light is just one slice of the universe's electromagnetic
rainbow. Infrared light, which humans can't see, has longer
wavelengths and is good for seeing objects that are cold, dusty or
far away. In our solar system, Wise is expected to find hundreds of
thousands of cool asteroids, including hundreds that pass relatively
close to Earth's path. Wise's infrared measurements will provide
better estimates of asteroid sizes and compositions -- important
information for understanding more about potentially hazardous
impacts on Earth.

"With infrared, we can find the dark asteroids other surveys have
missed and learn about the whole population. Are they mostly big,
small, fluffy or hard?" said Peter Eisenhardt, the Wise project
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Wise also will find the coolest of the "failed" stars or brown dwarfs.
Scientists speculate it is possible that a cool star lurks right
under our noses, closer to us than our nearest known star, Proxima
Centauri, which is four light-years away. If so, Wise will easily
pick up its glow.
The mission also will spot dusty nests of stars and swirling
planet-forming disks, and may find the most luminous galaxy in the
universe.

To sense the infrared glow of stars and galaxies, the Wise spacecraft
cannot give off any detectable infrared light of its own. This is
accomplished by chilling the telescope and detectors to ultra-cold
temperatures. The coldest of Wise's detectors will operate at below 8
Kelvin, or minus 445 Fahrenheit.

"Wise is chilled out," said William Irace, the project manager at JPL.
"We've finished freezing the hydrogen that fills two tanks
surrounding the science instrument. We're ready to explore the
universe in infrared."

JPL manages Wise for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program
managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The
science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in
Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data
processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about the Wise mission is available online at:



http://www.nasa.gov/wise

[jacqmans]

STATUS REPORT: ELV-111709

EXPENDABLE LAUNCH VEHICLE STATUS REPORT

Spacecraft: Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
Launch Vehicle: Delta II 7320
Launch Pad:  SLC-2, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
Launch Date:  no earlier than Dec. 9, 2009
Launch Window: 6:10 - 6:23 a.m. PST

The launch of WISE aboard the Delta II is being rescheduled by
approximately two days. A launch date of Dec. 9 currently is under
review. This additional time will allow sufficient time for a review
of flight data from a Delta IV to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station planned early in the first week of December.

The Delta II flight simulation was conducted successfully on Nov. 11.
The first stage was loaded with liquid oxygen on Nov. 12 for leak
checks and associated launch vehicle testing. There were no issues or
concerns with the Delta II rocket.

At the Astrotech payload processing facility on north Vandenberg, work
is complete to load and then freeze the cryogenic hydrogen. This
hydrogen will be used to supercool the infrared telescope during its
six months of observations. There is one final week of spacecraft
testing which is under way. Work will then begin to prepare WISE to
move to the launch pad on or about Nov. 20 for integration with the
Delta II.

[John44]

 WISE L-20 News Conference
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5511

[gospacex]

Gosh, this thing may find an Earth sized Kuiper belt object!..

[Analyst]

Exploration in the true sense of the meaning. And so cost efficient.

Analyst

[Lewis007]

Launch has been delayed to December 11.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html

[Ford Mustang]

MEDIA ADVISORY: M09-229

NASA'S WISE SKY SURVEYING SPACECRAFT READY FOR LAUNCH DEC. 11

WASHINGTON - The launch of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer,
or WISE, aboard a Delta II rocket is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 11,
between 9:09 a.m. and 9:23 a.m. EST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California. NASA will provide television and Internet coverage of
prelaunch activities and liftoff of the agency's latest space science
mission.

After launch, WISE will scan the entire sky in infrared light with a
sensitivity hundreds of times greater than ever before, picking up
the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of
images. The mission will uncover objects never seen before, including
the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of
the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets.

A prelaunch news conference will be held Dec. 9 at 4 p.m. at the NASA
Vandenberg Resident Office and broadcast on NASA Television.
Reporters can ask questions from participating NASA centers. A WISE
mission science briefing immediately will follow the prelaunch news
conference. The briefings will be webcast at:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

A WISE webcast with launch and mission managers is scheduled for noon
Dec. 10. To access WISE features, visit NASA's WISE Web site at:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

On Dec. 11, NASA TV coverage of the countdown and launch will begin at
7 a.m. Launch coverage of countdown activities also will be available
on the NASA Web site at:

http://www.nasa.gov

Audio of the prelaunch news conference and launch coverage will be
available by dialing 321-867-1220/1240/1260. This is a listen-only
audio system. Mission audio of countdown activities without NASA
launch commentary will be carried on 321-867-7135 beginning at 6 a.m.


Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog starts at 7 a.m. The
coverage will feature real-time updates of countdown milestones, as
well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and
liftoff.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/home/ksc_blogs.html

The WISE mission news center is operational at the NASA Vandenberg
Resident Office. Reporters should call 805-605-3051 for launch
information. Recorded status reports also are available by dialing
805-734-2693.

[cd-slam]

The Kennedy link shown in the presser is just a general page, the specific page for the mission blog is at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/launch/launch_blog.html

I wondered why Kennedy site would have a blog for a Vandenberg launch.

[Jim]

The Kennedy link shown in the presser is just a general page, the specific page for the mission blog is at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/launch/launch_blog.html

I wondered why Kennedy site would have a blog for a Vandenberg launch.

A.  There is no NASA equivalent center at VAFB (like KSC and CCAFS)
B.  KSC has a resident office at VAFB.
C. KSC manages all ELV launches for NASA

[Chris Bergin]

Lockheed Martin Cryostat to Fly on NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer Mission

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec 09, 2009  -- NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) - scheduled for launch on Dec. 11, 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. - will scan the entire sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. Two Thermos-like annular tanks filled with solid hydrogen, called a dual-stage cryostat, built by the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (NYSE: LMT) Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto, will keep the mission's sensitive infrared telescope and detectors chilled to near absolute zero. Expected to last about 10 months, the solid hydrogen cryostat will cool the WISE focal plane to 7.6 Kelvin (minus 446 degrees Fahrenheit) and the optics to 12 Kelvin (minus 438 degrees Fahrenheit).

"After years of effort, it is very satisfying to finally reach the milestone of launch," said Iran Spradley, Senior Manager of the Thermal Sciences Department at the ATC. "We look forward with anticipation to the many discoveries that WISE is sure to make, and are enormously pleased to have played a role in this very important mission."

"Being a part of the WISE mission will always be a highlight in my career," said Larry Naes, recently retired Lockheed Martin WISE cryostat program manager. "From the very beginning of the program, our colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory assembled the best of the best to implement this mission, with a singular team focus to optimize the science and produce data that will contribute greatly to our understanding of the infrared universe."

The WISE mission will build on the heritage of NASA's very successful Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) launched in 1983. WISE, however, will have hundreds of times greater sensitivity and will uncover objects never before seen, including the coolest stars and the most luminous galaxies in the universe. The vast catalogs of infrared objects generated by WISE will help answer fundamental questions about the origins of planets, stars and galaxies, and provide astronomers a treasure trove of data that will be accessed for decades.

It is near-Earth objects, both asteroids and comets with orbits that come close to crossing Earth's path that will be the closest of WISE's discoveries. It is expected that WISE will find hundreds of these, and hundreds of thousands of additional asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By measuring the objects' infrared light, astronomers will get the first good estimate of the size distribution of the asteroid population. This information will reveal approximately how often Earth can expect an encounter with a potentially hazardous asteroid.

WISE will orbit Earth at an altitude of 326 miles, circling pole to pole about 15 times each day. A scan mirror within the WISE instrument will stabilize the line of sight so that snapshots can be taken every 11 seconds over the entire sky. Each position on the sky will be imaged a minimum of eight times, and some areas near the poles will be imaged more than 1,000 times. About 7,500 images will be taken every day at four different infrared wavelengths.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission's principal investigator, Edward L. (Ned) Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected in 2002 under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp, Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing will take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The mission's education and public outreach office is based at the University of California, Berkeley.

The ATC is the research and development organization of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC). LMSSC, a major operating unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation, designs and develops, tests, manufactures and operates a full spectrum of advanced-technology systems for national security and military, civil government and commercial customers. Chief products include human space flight systems; a full range of remote sensing, navigation, meteorological and communications satellites and instruments; space observatories and interplanetary spacecraft; laser radar; ballistic missiles; missile defense systems; and nanotechnology research and development.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2008 sales of $42.7 billion.

[jacqmans]

News release: 2009-188                                                                      Dec. 9, 2009

NASA's WISE Set to Blast Off and Map the Skies

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-188&cid=kintera_release_2009-188

PASADENA, Calif. -- The countdown clock is ticking, with just days to go before the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, rockets into space on a mission to map the entire sky in infrared light.

NASA's newest spacecraft is currently perched atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, Calif. It is scheduled to roar into space at dawn on Dec. 11, at 6:09:33 a.m. PST (9:09:33 a.m. EST), on a short journey to its final Earth-circling orbit 525 kilometers (326 miles) overhead.

After a one-month checkout, the mission will spend the next nine months mapping the cosmos in infrared light. It will cover the whole sky one-and-a-half times, snapping millions of pictures of everything from near-Earth asteroids to faraway galaxies bursting with new stars.

"The last time we mapped the whole sky at these particular infrared wavelengths was 26 years ago," said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, who is the principal investigator of the mission. "Infrared technology has come a long way since then. The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist paintings -- now, we'll have images that look like actual photographs."

At liftoff, the main Delta II engine and three solid-motor boosters will ignite, providing a total liftoff thrust of more than 1,812,000 newtons (407,000 pounds). The rocket will tilt toward the south, cross the California coastline and head out over the Pacific Ocean. At one minute and 39 seconds after launch, the three spent boosters will fall away from the rocket. Two minutes and 45 seconds later, the main engine will cut off, and 14 seconds later, the vehicle's second stage will ignite. At four minutes and 56 seconds after liftoff, the "fairing" covering the satellite will split open like a clamshell and fall away.

The second stage of the rocket will then cut off, reigniting again 52 minutes after launch. It will shut down a second time and then, at about 55 minutes after launch, the spacecraft will reach its final orbit and separate from the rocket. Engineers expect to pick up a signal from WISE anywhere from about one to 10 minutes after separation.

The next major event will occur about 20 minutes after separation -- the valves on the spacecraft's cryostat will automatically open. The cryostat houses and chills the telescope and infrared detectors with tanks of frozen hydrogen. Valves on the cryostat are opened after launch to allow boiled-off hydrogen to escape, thereby preventing the instrument from warming up.

"It is important to relieve the pressure due to the warming hydrogen as soon as possible," said William Irace, the mission’s project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "By venting the hydrogen to space, we cool our instrument down to extremely low temperatures so that the eyes of WISE won't be blinded by their own heat."

After the spacecraft is checked out and calibrated, it will begin the task of surveying the whole sky. This will take about six months, after which the spacecraft will begin to sweep the sky a second time, covering about one-half before the frozen coolant runs out. The mission's primary lifetime is expected to be about 10 months.

The closest of the mission's finds will be asteroids and comets with orbits that come relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. These are called near-Earth objects. The infrared explorer will provide size and composition information about hundreds of these objects, giving us a better idea of their diversity. How many are dark like coal, and how many are shiny and bright? And how do their sizes differ? The mission will help answer these questions through its infrared observations, which provide information that can't be obtained using visible-light telescopes.

"We can help protect our Earth by learning more about the diversity of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets," said Amy Mainzer, deputy project scientist for the mission at JPL.

The farthest of the mission's targets are powerful galaxies that are either churning out loads of new stars or dominated by voracious black holes. These galaxies are shrouded in dust, and often can't be seen in visible light. WISE will expose millions, and may even find the most energetic, or luminous, galaxy in the universe.

"WISE can see these dusty objects so far away that we will be looking back in time 10 billion years, when galaxies were forming," said Peter Eisenhardt, the mission's project scientist at JPL. "By scanning the entire sky, we’ll learn just how extreme this galaxy formation process can get."

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The mission's principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about Wise is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/ .


- end -

[John44]

 WISE Prelaunch News Conference
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5576

 WISE Mission Science Briefing
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5577

[faustod]

What about a rumoured launch delay by 24 hous?

[avitek]

Difference in countdown clocks on

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/

and

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html

[avitek]

Justin Ray on Spaceflight Now says:

0620 GMT (2:20 a.m. EST)
The WISE team says the next launch attempt will be Saturday morning at 6:09 a.m. local time (9:09 a.m. EST; 1409 GMT).
Still no official word on why this 24-hour delay from Friday has occurred.

0540 GMT (1:40 a.m. EST)
DELAY. Launch of the WISE spacecraft has been postponed. Information about the reason behind the delay and a new target date have not yet been released by NASA.

[WHAP]

Weather would be the most obvious reason, although there's always the possibility of a technical issue.

I like the "still no official word" bit.  At 2:20 am, what do you expect?

[butters]

Reports suggest the delay is due to a problem with a "booster steering engine".  Not sure if that refers to TVC or RCS. 

[Art LeBrun]

Reports suggest the delay is due to a problem with a "booster steering engine".  Not sure if that refers to TVC or RCS. 

My first guess is a vernier engine or a the main engine. Is steering a proper term for LV function?