{"id":15545,"date":"2016-05-04T19:19:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T11:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/stormy-weather-in-florida-delays-falcon-9-launch\/"},"modified":"2016-05-04T19:19:55","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T11:19:55","slug":"stormy-weather-in-florida-delays-falcon-9-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/stormy-weather-in-florida-delays-falcon-9-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Stormy weather in Florida delays Falcon 9 launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated with weather forecast.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The
The Falcon 9 rocket slated to launch Japan\u2019s JCSAT 14 communications satellite inside SpaceX\u2019s hangar at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX has delayed a planned Falcon 9 launch with a Japanese communications satellite to Friday due to inclement weather on Florida\u2019s Space Coast.<\/p>\n

The launch window is unchanged, opening at 1:21 a.m. EDT (0521 GMT) and extending for two hours Friday, to put the JCSAT 14 commercial communications satellite into orbit for SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. of Tokyo.<\/p>\n

The 229-foot-tall rocket could have been exposed to storms streaming over Central Florida on Wednesday if SpaceX went ahead with a launch attempt Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 will blast off from Cape Canaveral\u2019s seaside Complex 40 launch pad.<\/p>\n

There is a greater than 90 percent chance of favorable weather during Friday\u2019s launch window, according to the official U.S. Air Force forecast. The only concern is with ground-level winds at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

\u201cA late season frontal boundary is moving through Central Florida with widespread rain showers and thunderstorms,\u201d the Air Force\u2019s 45th Weather Squadron wrote in a forecast issued Wednesday afternoon. \u201cThe front and the associated weather is expected to be south of the Space Coast by this evening. Thursday will bring noticeably cooler and drier conditions to the spaceport. Winds will be gusty from the northwest, but diminish after sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conditions at launch time should be mostly clear with scattered high-level cirrus clouds at 28,000 feet, northwest winds at 12 to 17 mph, and a temperature of 57 degrees Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n

The launch will mark the Falcon 9\u2019s fourth flight of the year, and the rocket\u2019s 24th launch since its debut in June 2010.<\/p>\n

\"Intense
Intense thunderstorms over Florida prevented the Falcon 9 from launching Thursday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The rocket\u2019s second stage will ignite two times before deploying the JCSAT 14 spacecraft in geostationary transfer orbit about 32 minutes after liftoff.<\/p>\n

SpaceX hopes to recover the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage on a landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean east of Cape Canaveral, but the company says the recovery attempt is unlikely to succeed due to the high speed required to put the JCSAT 14 satellite into its high-altitude orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing stage separation, the first stage of Falcon 9 will attempt an experimental landing on the \u2018Of Course I Still Love You\u2019 droneship,\u201d SpaceX said in a post on the company\u2019s website. \u201cGiven this mission\u2019s GTO destination, the first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The landing experiment will further test out SpaceX\u2019s plan for recovering and reusing Falcon 9 first stage boosters.<\/p>\n

\"The
The JCSAT 14 satellite is pictured before encapsulation inside the Falcon 9\u2019s payload fairing. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The JCSAT 14 communications satellite, made by Space Systems\/Loral, is kicking off a 15-year mission providing television broadcast, data network and broadband Internet services over the Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n

It will extend and replace coverage currently offered by the JCSAT 2A spacecraft launched in 2002 by a European Ariane 4 rocket. The new craft will be renamed JCSAT 2B once it is operational.<\/p>\n

Four satellites for SKY Perfect JSAT have launched from Cape Canaveral before JCSAT 14.<\/p>\n

The JCSAT 2 communications satellite flew into space aboard a commercial Titan 3 rocket on New Year\u2019s Eve 1989. Lockheed Martin Atlas 2AS rockets took off with three more JCSAT telecom birds in 1995, 1997 and 1999.<\/p>\n

JCSAT 14 is the first satellite SKY Perfect JSAT has contracted to launch with SpaceX.<\/p>\n

The Japanese telecom company has two more satellites in final assembly for launches later this year \u2014 one aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket and another on Falcon 9.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated with weather forecast. The Falcon 9 rocket slated to launch Japan\u2019s JCSAT 14 communications satellite inside SpaceX\u2019s hangar at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX has delayed a planned Falcon 9 launch with a Japanese communications satellite to Friday due to inclement weather on Florida\u2019s Space Coast. The launch window is unchanged, opening at 1:21 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1736,479,377,3639,311,3488,2897,316],"class_list":["post-15545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-complex-40","tag-falcon-9","tag-japan","tag-jcsat-14","tag-reusability","tag-sky-perfect-jsat","tag-space-systems-loral","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}