Washington, DC – February 3, 1998 – High altitude winds above the Kourou launch site kept Ariane V105 Earthbound Tuesday as the latest attempt to get the first French space launch of 1998 underway was scrubbed again. Engineers with Arianespace, the French commercial rocket company, got to T- six minutes in the countdown before fresh weather data indicated the unacceptable wind condition. Officials will try again just after 6:30pm EST Thursday.
Should space officials have had to destroy the ascending Ariane 4 booster
Tuesday, the wind would have sent debris straying into an unsafe area. With
the wind condition unlikely to lessen during the launch window, officials
called off this latest attempt. The first try, on Jan. 30th, was also
cancelled due to high altitude winds, a condition which also existed
throughout the week. Arianespace officials said in Washington that the
rocket could be readied for additional launch attempts each day until
Friday. If no launch has occurred by then, the rocket's tanks would need to
be drained, causing a delay of at least a few days.
The weather gremlins were a relatively rare event with the French
spaceport, whose ability to launch satellites with virtual on-time accuracy
far exceeds the delays that often plague the U.S. spaceport at Cape
Canaveral. As luck would have it with weather this week, launch of the
first Delta II/Motorola Globalstar from the military base at Cape Canaveral
was threatened by the poor weather that has much of the U.S. east coast in
its grip.P
Payload for this first Ariane launch of 1998 is the Brasilsat B3 and
INMARSAT 3F5. Both payloads were unaffected by the weather grounding the
rocket.
