Sunday, May 5, 2013

Vietnam's satellite launch postponed due to bad weather

Saigon GP Daily: As planned, this morning, May 4, the first remote sensing satellite of Vietnam (VNREDSat-1) would be launched into orbit in the French Guyana Space Centre. Accordingly, the Arianespace company (France), the contractor's performance satellite launch VNREDSat-1 project would launch the satellites into orbit at 9 am on May 4, 2013 (GMT). However, the launch of the satellite was delayed because of bad weather.

Not only the launch of VNREDSat-1 of Vietnam, the launch of two other satellites Proba-V of the European Space Agency ESA and ESTCube-1 belonging to Finnish Meteorological Institute in partnership with Germany’s Space Center was delayed as well.

About one hour before the scheduled launch, SGGP reporter observed a live Arianespace program on the internet TV channel (www.arianespace.tv) with the image of VV02 Vega rocket ready on launch. However, when the expected launch time came (9 pm this morning) there is no signal in the TV channel about 20 minutes.

Later, the Twiter page of Arianespace announced the news "VV02 Vega rocket launch has been postponed due to unfavorable winds in high atmosphere."

This event was later confirmed by the Universe Institute of Technology (the Academy of Science and Technology of Vietnam), the sponsor of the project of Vietnam Satellite observations of natural resources, environment and natural disasters (VNREDSat-1). “The date for VNREDSat-1 satellite launch will be determined later”, it said....

The Ariane 5 launch pad in French Guiana, shot by Philippe Semanaz / Philou.cn (username on Flickr), Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

No comments: