NASA-International Space Station

The Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Atlas V rocket that will take it into space are being prepared for another launch attempt Thursday morning after an earlier try was scrubbed as of high winds. The launch window for Thursday runs from 10:23 a.m. to 11:23 a.m. The weather forecast improves to a 60 percent possibility of acceptable conditions.

The SDO spacecraft is headed to an orbit about 22,300 miles above Earth. From that height, the spacecraft will point its instruments at the sun and relay the readings directly to a ground station in New Mexico. The research is predictable to reveal the sun's inner workings by continuously taking high declaration images of the sun, collecting readings from inside the sun and measuring its magnetic field activity. This data is predictable to give researchers the insight they need to eventually forecast solar storms and other activity on the sun that can influence spacecraft in orbit, astronauts on the International Space Station and electronic and other systems on Earth.