Should space officials have had to destroy the ascending Ariane 4 booster Tuesday, the wind would have sent debris straying into an unsafe area. With the wind condition unlikely to lessen during the launch window, officials called off this latest attempt. The first try, on Jan. 30th, was also cancelled due to high altitude winds, a condition which also existed throughout the week. Arianespace officials said in Washington that the rocket could be readied for additional launch attempts each day until Friday. If no launch has occurred by then, the rocket's tanks would need to be drained, causing a delay of at least a few days.

The weather gremlins were a relatively rare event with the French spaceport, whose ability to launch satellites with virtual on-time accuracy far exceeds the delays that often plague the U.S. spaceport at Cape Canaveral. As luck would have it with weather this week, launch of the first Delta II/Motorola Globalstar from the military base at Cape Canaveral was threatened by the poor weather that has much of the U.S. east coast in its grip.P Payload for this first Ariane launch of 1998 is the Brasilsat B3 and INMARSAT 3F5. Both payloads were unaffected by the weather grounding the rocket.