Dirty Skies

Archive for January 19th, 2006

These are shots I took of the New Horizons launch from my front yard on the other side of Florida — about 140 miles away from the launch site.

The filenames indicate date and time as YYMMDD_HHMMSS Eastern Standard Time.

Notice shot 060119_140207 also has a highly processed version as well. This was the moment when the vehicle disappeared from my view (OK, the speck I knew to be the vehicle), however image processing brings it out of nowhere! I should have kept shooting a few more seconds in this spot.

Live and learn.

Good luck and Godspeed!

Greetings and welcome back to the “Big Rocket Show.”

12:54 PM: So far so good.

- Announcing green for all weather constraints.
- Built in 10 minute hold coming up at T-4 minutes.
- Clouds need to thin a little or the launch will be delayed while they switch to a different weather configuration.

1:04 PM: No go due to cloud ceiling limits. Looking for launch at 1:13 PM EST

1:12 PM: Looking for launch at 1:30 PM EST

- Double checking launch path area cleared of all vessels
- Waiting on weather team to make the call

1:23 PM: Looking for launch at 1:40 PM EST

1:35 PM: Set indefinite hold.

I’m seeing even more low level clouds on the webcast here of NASA TV. You guys need a pack of matches or something?!?! You’re killing me! (I jest)

1:39 PM: Load design set 29 from balloon LR6 (updated weather profile).

1:46 PM: Looking for launch at 2:00 PM EST pending resolution of low clouds.

1:50 PM: Go for launch at 2:00 PM EST. Range observers have cleared the weather issues but will continue to monitor the cloud situation in real-time.

1:53 PM: All aspects of the support team have been polled and are go to resume the count T-4.

1:56 PM: The count has resumed. 4 minutes until launch and counting.

2:00 PM: LIFT OFF!

If you missed it Watch the Launch (7.5 MB) recorded from NASA TV as it happened.

You’ll need Apple – QuickTime to view this movie file.
Images and video in this post are screen grabs from NASA TV.