25th is dead, long life to the 25th!

25th of February was originally known as the CryoSat-2 (CS-2) launch date. As everybody knows now, due a problem on the launcher side, the launch date had to be postponed.

The latest news we have today is that the new launch date is now set for March 25th.

This new date consolidates decisions made earlier this week concerning the spacecraft storage period up to February the 12th and the logistic to reduce the team in Baikonur to this date.

Overall schedule is being presently updated for when the campaign will resume.

Not easy to illustrate the message of today with a picture but the one below may show that CS-2 team despite this delay and the work still to be done before launch .... is well on track!


This is the railways track we cross every morning with the bus just before entering the MIK site 31 on the Cosmodrome. This rail track is used to bring heavy equipment by train onto site 31 as well as Soyuz-2 rocket in the future on launch pad 31 (less than 500m from the assembly hall!).

On June 15th 2007, some of the TerraSar launch team were standing on the right side of this rail track to observe the launch from Launch pad 109: the same place from where CryoSat-2 will take off on the 25th of March ...2010 :-)