TacSat-3 Delayed Until Ides of March

UPDATE: The TacSat-3 or Tactical Satellite is now DELAYED until approximately the Ides of March but it is set for launch aboard an Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur I booster rocket from the FAA/AST commercially licensed Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport co-located at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia for a pre-dawn mission to orbit [video].

The TacSat-3 will be the third orbital launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in a little over two years with the Minotaur I booster rocket. The TacSat-3 launch campaign has been delayed into 2009 because of glitches with the USAF satellite. But the Minotaur I has successfully boosted the TacSat-2 and the NFIRE from the spaceport [video] to low Earth orbit [LEO]. The TacSat 2 launch was seen by observers west of Detroit in late 2007.

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport was selected by Orbital Sciences Corporation for the first test flights of the Taurus-2 NASA COTS flight to demonstrate re-supply capability to the International Space Station in late 2010.