Scattered clouds and rocket exhaust
Here's a great shot of last week's successful launch of NASA's New Horizon's mission to Pluto. Weather played a spoiler's role in the launch. Liftoff was delayed one day by high winds at the launch pad, at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A power outage at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab near Laurel, Md. - likely related to a morning rainstorm - postponed the launch for a second day.
And a low "broken" cloud deck that obscured the view of tracking cameras delayed launch on the third day of the launch window. But the clouds finally parted enough to be rated "scattered" by the Air Force meteorologists, and NASA pushed the button. The Atlas V rocket tore through the clouds and boosted the spacecraft to 36,000 mph - the fastest craft ever hurled into the cosmos from Earth. Controllers at APL will guide New Horizons past Jupiter next spring, and hope to reach Pluto by 2015.
Categories: Cool pictures
