NASA delays Glory launch

NASA announced Wednesday that it has postponed the launch of its earth-orbiting Glory Mission spacecraft due to technical problems, Xinhua reported.

During the final 15 minutes before Wednesday’s scheduled launch at 5.09 a.m. from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, the vehicle interface control console, a ground interface with Orbital Sciences’ Taurus XL rocket, gave an unexpected reading, NASA said in a press release.

The cause and potential effect of the reading was not fully understood, the release said.

With a 48-second available launch window, there was insufficient time to analyze the issue causing the launch to be postponed, NASA said.

It said members of the Taurus team are troubleshooting the issue. The next launch attempt is no earlier than Thursday, Feb 24, at 5.09 a.m., it said.

Glory will send back data to help scientists improve their ability to predict Earth’s future environment and to distinguish human-induced climate change from natural climate variability, NASA scientists said.

The $434-million mission is managed by the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.