The delivery included the mission’s sample tubes, cigar-sized metal cylinders that will store rock samples collected by the Perseverance rover for retrieval and return to Earth by subsequent robotic missions. Hardware for the Perseverance rover landed at the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch and Landing Facility on May 11 on a NASA C-130 transport plane. Obviously, there’s a lot of teleworking, but when we do have to have the hands-on work, we try to do it in as safe of a manner as possible.” “That work is progressing as best we can. “We’re definitely are encouraging people, unless they have a significant primary role, not to travel for the testing or the launch,” Baez said. We learn from every mission as far as things that we have to do to protect ourselves and to prevent the team from getting sick.
“We’re really looking forward to this one,” he said. EDT (1310 GMT) on July 17, within a broader window extending from 9:00-10:40 a.m. “Things are progressing as well as they can,” Baez said. Omar Baez, NASA’s launch director for the Perseverance mission, said the rocket’s arrival at Cape Canaveral and the successful launch of the previous Atlas 5 flight May 17 “should set us up with plenty of time for hitting the beginning of the (rover) launch window July 17.” Rocket and rover preparations for the July launch are continuing with safeguards to mitigate impacts from the coronavirus pandemic. ULA typically delivers rocket hardware launch sites using the company’s ocean-going vessel named “RocketShip.” But the vessel recently ferried there Delta 4 rocket cores to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and was not available for the Atlas 5 shipment to Florida. The cargo aircraft carried the 107-f0ot-long (32-meter) Atlas first stage from Huntsville, Alabama, near ULA’s rocket factory in Decatur.Īfter unloading the booster from the cargo jet, ULA moved the rocket into the Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center for post-shipment checks. The first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket arrived at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Skid Strip runway May 18 aboard a Ukrainian-built Antonov An-124 transport plane. Two key pieces of hardware needed for NASA’s next Mars rover - an Atlas rocket booster and sterile components of the rover’s sample collection system - recently arrived at Cape Canaveral ahead of the mission’s scheduled launch July 17. Wrapped up for shipment, the first stage of the Atlas 5 rocket that will launch NASA’s Perseverance rover arrived at Cape Canaveral one May 18 aboard a Ukrainian-built Antonov An-124 cargo plane. EDITOR’S NOTE: United Launch Alliance ground crews raised the Atlas 5 rocket’s first stage inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad Thursday, May 28, to begin stacking of the launch vehicle for the Perseverance rover mission.