269 Days, almost 9 Months
HETE-2 was attached to its Pegasus launch vehicle in December, 1999, ready for a January launch. But then, NASA got cold feet. On January 14, 2000, they decided to postpone the launch. We had built it in an MIT lab for about 1/3 what the parametrics said it should cost, and that made some people nervous. Even though it was already well-tested, NASA demanded more testing. So, back to Massachusetts it went. No problems were discovered. We finally launched on October 9, 2000.