Officials from both Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB] and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said the launch of the Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) spacecraft is not expected to occur before Nov. 4. A launch that had been rescheduled for Oct. 28 was postponed due to “particulate contamination inside the fairing of the Pegasus launch vehicle.” The launch vehicle was removed from the pad for inspection.

It is the second time this launch has been delayed. The first time occurred early last week due to a GPS signal dropout on the target vehicle.

In other NASA launch news, the federal agency opened a launch window for the next Space Shuttle mission between May 12 and June 3, 2005.