The Space Flight Now MER-B status page: http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/merb/status.html says that the first opportunity to launch MER-B is at 10:35PM EDT (02:25 UT) this evening and the second opportunity is at 11:18PM EDT (03:18 UT). If the first opportunity is taken, the Delta depletion burn will take place at 04:15 UT. For the second opportunity, the burn will take place at 04:58. The burn should last about 45 seconds. In both cases, the Delta rocket will be inside the Earth's shadow. For the first opportunity, shadow entry begins about 04:13 and ends about 04:22. For the second opportunity, shadow entry begins about 04:54 and ends about 05:03. Although a request for the object "MER" does produce the desired four choices on the Horizons system, the attempted use of any of those choices produces an "unexpected output" error at the present time (9:20AM PDT). I expect that this will be fixed soon. Note that the Horizons system will produce RA/Dec Alt/Az predictions for the time that the Delta second stage is inside the earth's shadow. The MER-B spacecraft and its third stage will not be in the Earth's shadow. Mike McCants ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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