WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - NASA has delayed the launch of its two satellites to space with the dual mission to unravel cosmic and solar mysteries for the third time.
Bad weather had forced NASA to postpone the launch of the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions from Space Launch Complex at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to Monday.
NASA said it is standing down from Monday's launch attempt of the missions aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket due to bad weather at the launch site and a SPHEREx ground data-flow issue.
The U.S. space agency has set the next launch attempt to Tuesday, with liftoff targeted for 11:10 p.m. ET.
'Launch weather for Tuesday, March 11, is at 40% probability of violation with thick clouds continued in the forecast,' NASA said in a statement.
The SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites are currently encapsulated within a protective payload fairing inside the Astrotech Space Operations facility at the launching station.
The SPHEREx observatory is 8.5 feet tall, 10.5 feet wide and deep, with a solar panel that produces around 750 watts of power. The PUNCH mission features four 140-pound small satellites, each about 1-by-2-by-3 feet in size. At launch, the integrated SPHEREx and PUNCH stack will weigh around 1,667 pounds.
The SPHERExmission will provide an all-sky spectral survey. Over a two-year planned mission, the SPHEREx Observatory will collect data on more than 450 million galaxies along with more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way in order to explore the origins of the universe.
The mission is expected to provide a better idea of what happened in the first second after the big bang and search for key ingredients for life in the galaxy.
A constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit, PUNCH will study origins of the Sun's outflow of material, or the solar wind, capturing continuous 3D images of the Sun's corona and the solar wind's journey into the solar system.
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