Okay, well, everything has gone well today, and I'm glad to have Omar Baez with me right now,
who is our NASA launch director/launch manager for this mission, and I know it's been a very hectic three days for us here,
Omar, but it's an exciting mission. Everything has gone well so far. We're sending a spacecraft up to the edge of our solar system.
Were there any particular difficulties that we had to get over today or even the past three days that were outstanding in any way?
Bruce, it's like the last six months had been difficult, but I'll tell you, in the last three days, there were things that
we were dealing with that were beyond our control. Mother Nature got ahold of us; weather on the first day,
nothing we could do about that. The winds were exceeding our, our limits for being able to fly. And yesterday,
Mother Nature got us in the Baltimore area with knocking out power at APL, so not much we could do to help that.
We struggled through it early on today with clouds, and the observers from the range that have to have a clear view of the vehicle
as it rises in that first 20 seconds were having trouble getting that solution. So again, that was Mother Nature holding us back.
But we got through it. It was challenging and we got it, and the vehicle looks to be where it needs to be.
Well, that's good, and that was my next question. How did the vehicle perform today?
Are we looking at, you know, with obviously a successful spacecraft separation, but overall, how did the vehicle perform?
The vehicle appears to be in the right place, where it needs to be to rendezvous with Venus and Pluto nine years
from now, so we are looking really good.
Okay, excellent. Well, now that we've got New Horizons off the ground, it's on its way to Pluto, it's going to take us,
you know, nine-and-a-half or so years to get there, it's basically out of our hands right now.
That's right. What's up next for the launch team here?
The launch team transitions into Pegasus mode, and we go do the Space Tech 5 mission out at Vandenberg,
and we're scheduled to launch that Feb. 28.
Great. And I know you had a great launch team here, everybody's very excited that we got this one
off the ground. I know there was a little, kind of, nip and tuck with the clouds today, but it's all been successful and, of course,
we had plenty of window to work with, thank goodness. Sometimes we only have a minute or so to work with.
But we had a, we had a good launch, and we're very excited about this entire mission. So, Omar, thank you.
Congratulations to you and your team, and I think we're going to see you here in about an hour or so at a press conference.
Thank you very much, Bruce. Appreciate it.
Alright, Omar. Thank you. Just a final summary, everything did go extremely well for the launch of our
New Horizons spacecraft on the Atlas V launch vehicle. The launch of the Atlas V and the New Horizons spacecraft was very successful,
and the data coming here has indicated that there are no problems with the, with the spacecraft following ascent.
Again, to mention the post-launch press conference coming up from the KSC Press Site.
That'll be carried live on NASA TV beginning in about one hour at around 4 o'clock p.m. So, with that, this concludes our
launch commentary of the Atlas V and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft
from the Atlas Space Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This is Atlas launch control.