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George Diller: And with us here now is Omar Baez, the NASA launch director for launch today.

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Omar, first of all, let's go to the bottom line. What did we see in the Pegasus data as far as the success of the launch today?

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Omar Baez: The Pegasus data and the launch success today has been incredible.

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The vehicle really performed as it should, as it always has, and a very successful mission for the Pegasus phase.

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And I wish the DART guys in their phase of it the same good luck.

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George Diller: The last nine minutes or so, or 13 minutes, were fairly busy and there seemed to be some issues being,

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being worked in the final minutes there that worked through fairly successfully. But can you tell us what all

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was going on, because it seemed very busy.

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Omar Baez: It was extremely busy. George, a Pegasus mission always seems like it's going calm and it's inevitable we,

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we get into a situation where you're in the last minutes and something's going wrong or is out of its normal

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state and you've got to come to a resolution on it pretty quick here,

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because we're on a tight timeline in flying through that imaginary box in the airspace there.

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We've got very short windows and a very short time to react. What was happening there was we lost what's called our "pilot" tone,

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and it's what we use to make sure we're locked in with the range assets to make sure that in a case of erratic flight or something

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unusual with the vehicle that the local range here can terminate the mission.

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And we were in a situation where we were in the turning phase of the mission or where the L-1011 is doing their

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turn back towards the launch drop point and we lost a pilot tone simultaneously on both sides.

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We have an A and a B side. That's very unusual to see and, and, but you can quickly come to a resolution on it and,

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and exonerate that it's not coming from the launch vehicle cause there's two independent sides there.

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So there was a couple things at play. We were having comm. trouble early on, communication trouble between the

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ground and the airplanes, and there was an opp. happening at Edwards Air Force Base that could have been interfering with us.

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Another of the variables that we had in here is we're flying an F-18 chase plane, and sometimes the chase plane

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can get in-between the signal being sent from the ground antennas up to where the Pegasus are, and you could lose lock in those situations.

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There's a lot of RF environment also up there coming back from not only the rocket but the chase plane and its

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cameras is also transmitting. So there was a lot of emissions going on there and that was probably the likely cause.

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Once we got out of our turn and into the straight and level flight path, we did see a dropout but it was on one

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side and it was momentary. And so that's not of a concern.

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It's a concern when you lose both sides of that and it's for extended periods of time, so... It took us awhile,

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and it was a critical point when we're doing our polling, and it kind of sounded disjointed there but believe me,

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we knew exactly what we needed to do and had we needed to, we would have called it a day.

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So it all worked out well and DART's been a long time coming, and we finally got it off. And hopefully these

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guys can go out and, and, and do what this mission is intended to do and try out this technology.

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George Diller: Well, Omar, I guess we can kind of come to a conclusion here by saying that the L-1011 is back on the ground.

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We're seeing it taxi right now from the runway back to the, to the ramp.

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So, with that, and as far as the launch phase is concerned, it looks like that's gone well.

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We're off to a good start and hopefully the spacecraft team will have what they've bargained for for a quite

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some time now.

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Because we're off and running and there's a lot of exciting technology that we're gonna hope to prove here

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in the next, in the next, next 23 hours or so. Omar Baez: Absolutely.

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George Diller: So Omar, thank you very much and we'll be talking to you again. We've got another mission coming up

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fairly closely out here, do we not?

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Omar Baez: Yeah, it, it seems like I'm gonna have to move out to California pretty soon.

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Yeah, I've got about a 10-day turnaround before I've gotta come back and do the NOAA-L mission, which is

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scheduled for May 11. And yeah, we'll be right back here and working that mission on a Delta II.

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George Diller: Right. NOAA, NOAA-N and it's...

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Omar Baez: That's NOAA-N, that's right.

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George Diller: They're, they're just about ready to be put into their transportation container to go out to the launch

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pad, I believe about April 20. So they're now number one on the runway out here.

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Omar Baez: Yup.

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George Diller: So. Alright, well, thank you, Omar. And that will conclude our launch coverage of

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Pegasus/DART for the moment, with launch having been successful.

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Now we're moving into the mission phase, which we'll be following now until later tomorrow morning and

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returning again for our next launch at Vandenberg on May the 11th on a Delta II with NOAA-N.

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This is Pegasus launch control.

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