GCN Circular 837

Saturday, 7 October 2000

On Friday night (6 October) at 2300 EDT, it was decided by NASA and MIT
to delay the launch of HETE-2 by 48 hours.  The delay resulted 
from the need to repair a spacecraft ground-support cable which was 
accidently damaged by Orbital Corporation personnel while removing a 
protective cover over the Pegasus fairing.  Also, it became known to 
NASA that a previously-unannounced outage of Internet service to the 
Kwajalein Missile Range would have taken place during the Friday 
countdown and during a portion of the Saturday morning launch window.

Validation of the repaired cable, a short functional test of the 
satellite, and battery recharging will occur during the delay.
The next launch attempt will occur on Monday morning (9 October),
at approximately 0145 EDT.

George Ricker, MIT Center for Space Research
Principal Investigator for the HETE-2 Mission