Amended The Discovery Mission 5 Preproposal Conference was held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX on October 7, 1996. The Amendments, minutes of the preproposal conference, and charts presented at the conference can be found here . It is anticipated that these budgetary uncertainties will not be resolved before February 1997, at the earliest. At that time, the AO will be reconsidered. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
Spacecraft spin up and separation was on time and perfect.
This Far and Extreme Ultraviolet astronomy satellite is now safely stored in the cargo bay of Space Shuttle Columbia ready for landing tomorrow morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch of the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was delayed by one day, due to a storm front passing though the Kennedy Space Center area Sunday night and Monday morning. The probability that the weather would violate launch criteria was expected to greatly exceeded 90 percent, so the decision was made in advance to wait until Tuesday morning to crank up the launch team. Tuesday morning's weather looks great, with only a 10 percent chance of launch constraint violation. At the various reviews the last few days, all has gone well.