Posted: Thu, Aug 2, 2001, 11:40 AM ET (1540 GMT)
Poor weather forecast for Cape Canaveral led launch officials early Thursday to delay the launch of NASA's Genesis space science mission until Friday. NASA had hoped to launch the Delta 2 carrying Genesis at 12:27 pm EDT (1627 GMT) Thursday, but after meeting early Thursday decided to postpone the launch given the poor weather conditions predicted for the day. NASA is now targeting a launch at 12:24 pm EDT (1624 GMT) Friday, although weather conditions could again force a postponement. Originally scheduled for launch on Monday, July 30, Genesis was grounded for two days while engineers checked to make sure the spacecraft's power converters did not share the same defect that caused similar converters to fail a recent lab test. The launch was rescheduled for Wednesday, but postponed because of thick clouds. Once launched, Genesis will travel to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, where it will spend more than two years collecting samples of the solar wind that will be returned to Earth for study in 2004.

Related Links:

•  Spaceflight Now mission status center
•  Genesis mission web site