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Thunderstorms Could Delay Psyche Asteroid Mission Launch on Thursday - NASA Engineer

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - A high chance of thunderstorms could force NASA to postpone the launch of its nearly six year, 2.2 billion-mile unmanned mission to study the Psyche asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Psyche Mission Chief Engineer for Operations David Oh said on Tuesday.
Sputnik
"[Weather conditions] look challenging for Thursday," Oh said. "I think we were showing a maybe 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms."
Oh cautioned that conditions look more hopeful for a launch over the weekend but are still not certain for then.
"Things do look better over the weekend but I think we were still 50-50 according to the weather forecast," he said.
In addition, Oh pointed out that there are a limited number of opportunities to do the launch.
"So, I think we may be pretty aggressive in our attempt to get off the ground here. But the weather will need to cooperate with us to do it," Oh said.
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