The launch of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or Grace, mission for NASA and the German Center for Air and Space Flight aboard a Russian Rockot launch vehicle has been postponed at least 24 hours to no earlier than March 17 due to high winds at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. The launch window on March 17 is from 1:21 to 1:31 a.m. PST.
NASA intends to cover the launch with live audio via NASA Television. Audio coverage of the launch on NASA Television will begin Sunday morning at 1 a.m. PST and conclude at approximately 3 a.m. PST following spacecraft separation.
NASA TV is carried on GE-2, transponder 9C located at 85 degrees west longitude, vertical polarization, frquency 3880.0 megahertz, audio 6.8 megahertz.
Launch audio will also be available via a webcast at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/webcast/gracelaunch.html .
A webcast will also be available from the German Center for Air and Space Flight site at:
http://www.dlr.de/DLR-Homepage .
If launch takes place March 17, an archive of the launch will be available at the JPL site on Monday, March 18.
Additional information about the Grace program is available on the Internet at:
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace .
Grace is a joint partnership between NASA and the German Center for Air and Space Flight (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Rumfahrt, or DLR). NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif, manages the U.S. portion of the project for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington. Science data processing, distribution, archiving and product verification are managed under a cooperative arrangement between JPL and the University of Texas' Austin-based Center for Space Research in the United States and Germany's Earth Research Center (or GeoForschungsZentrum).
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.