A company Webcast of the mission, numbered NROL-67, will start 20 minutes before liftoff and cut off four minutes into flight, after a nose cone splits away from the classified satellite.
Precise launch windows are not disclosed for NRO missions, but a longer “launch period” ends at 3:35 p.m.
Then late next Sunday, SpaceX plans to launch cargo to the station from Cape Canaveral, in a Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff is targeted for 10:50 p.m., an instantaneous window.Go to floridatoday.com for launch updates and to watch the launch broadcast.
A planned March 16 attempt was postponed when some possible contamination was found inside the Dragon’s unpressurized “trunk”.
In a statement Friday, SpaceX said company and NASA engineers had determined the Dragon was ready to fly “as-is.” The statement continued: “All parties agree that the particular constituents observed in Dragon’s trunk are in line with the previously defined environments levels and do not impose additional risk to the payloads.”
A few hours after Tuesday’s planned Atlas V launch, NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and two cosmonauts are scheduled to blast off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan.
It will be another sign of apparently normal cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in space operations, even as the countries trade sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Earlier this month, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins returned from the station in a Soyuz with two cosmonauts.
And last week, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman joined with a cosmonaut and German astronaut for a press conference previewing their planned May 28 flight.
Swanson’s launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome is set for 5:17 p.m. EDT Tuesday, followed by docking at the station just after 11 p.m.
During his visit to Kennedy Space Center last week, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Orlando) echoed NASA statements that political differences with Russia would not disrupt station operations.
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