GEORGE DILLER: This is Delta Launch Control at T-61 minutes, 27
seconds and counting. Joining us here now at the console of the Mission
Director's Center is Ed Sedivy, who is the Phoenix program manager from
Lockheed Martin for the Phoenix spacecraft, and he has been with Phoenix
since, essentially since the spacecraft began. Is that right, Ed?
ED SEDIVY: Pretty much. About 10 years ago.
DILLER: Ten years ago. So the, the spacecraft's had a lot of testing out at
Lockheed Martin in Denver, so the tape we're going to see right now really
is almost at the end of the process. Is that right? Because we're, when you
get to the Cape, it's almost ready to launch.
SEDIVY: That's, that's very true. We've done most of the work by the time we ship.
DILLER: Well, if we could go ahead and roll the tape, we'll be able to see,
we'll be able to see some of the activities since the spacecraft arrived.
SEDIVY: Yeah. We're at, what we've got here on the tape right now is the
C-17 transport plane touching down. We arrived at KSC on the shuttle
landing strip just before sunset and we took our time and rolled out the
Phoenix spacecraft in the shipping container, pushed it across the tarmac,
loaded it up on the semi and transported over to PHSF, rolled it into the
truck lock and waited till overnight, put it in the clean room, and what you're
seeing here is operations the following day, on May 8, where we uncrated it,
rolled it in on the dolly, took off the plastic wrap that we had on it and
readied it for the KSC ops. One of the first things we needed to do was
remove the heat shield, which you see happening there, to gain access to the,
to the lander itself within the backshell. What you see right there in that test,
firing the sep. nuts for the crew solar array, the explosive bolts were fired
and then the floor crew walked out the solar array by hand. And in flight,
we're in a zero-G environment and you don't need to worry about supporting
the hinge load by hand. All of our lifts are done with the utmost of care and
everything's dry run. Here you can see us fitting the vehicle up onto the
turnover fixture. The turnover fixture allows us to slew the vehicle through a
lot of different angles and it's primarily used for access in a hang-down
configuration that you see being established right now. What was, what we
were doing on this particular activity here, after the solar array was walked
out, was we did illumination test on a cruise solar array, and that provided
confidence for us that the energy that the cruise solar arrays would produce
was, in fact, consistent with prior measurements. We did get confirmation of
that and that put us in good shape to go ahead and restow the arrays, put the
flight sep bolts back in, torque them into position and ready the cruise array
for the launch itself. You'll notice everybody is, is fully gowned, gloves
taped, wrists, full planetary protection criteria were maintained in the high
bay the entire time -- very tight constraints on the deliverable hardware to
the planet to meet the NASA planetary protection criteria. OK, this is a lift
onto our spin-balance table and the team's getting it aligned here. The Delta
third stage is an unguided, spin-stabilized stage, so getting a very, very good
dynamic balance on the spacecraft is very important to injection accuracy.
So we had done a series of spins before we came to KSC and we did a set of
dry spins and then a final wet spin after we had loaded the prop tanks, both
with and without the heat shield. What we found was that our, our weight
calculations that were done before and after the spin that we performed in
Denver at Lockheed Martin and down here at KSC, our calculations were off
by less than a quarter of an ounce, and that made it really very, very
straightforward for us to ballast up the vehicle.
DILLER: That last thing we saw being installed there was...
SEDIVY: That was the flight radar that was being installed. You could see
the team working underneath and they were working on the antenna suite. In
some of the views, when you see the spacecraft lifted like that, the center
area within the cruise stage looks kind of shiny, and that's an additional solar
panel that we added to the configuration for Phoenix because of the larger
solar range that Mars is at at arrival. It's about 1.67 astronomical units.
DILLER: So we just mated the spacecraft to something. What was...
SEDIVY: We just mated the spacecraft to the third stage and that's the, that
was the flight mate. The heat shield has to go on last because the structure of
the vehicle is, is only accessible through three lifting points on the heat
shield. What we're showing now is the, the canning operations where the
spacecraft is fully flight-readied, all the testing's been done and we're
lowering the transportation canister over the vehicle and then it is clamped
down to that base collar assembly that you see, that's mounted at the bottom
of the transport fixture. The canning operation went very smoothly. It was
done on a Friday and then the following Monday, on the 23rd of July, we
began the trip to the pad before dawn, and that's what you see going on right there.
DILLER: Well, Ed, for, for the Lockheed Martin team, in a way, this is just
the beginning, because you're involved with it as it's going
to the planet from Denver, are you not?
SEDIVY: Well, that's right. It's another milestone. It's a big milestone.
Launch is obviously a very important event. There is certainly some risk
with launch, but it's something that we do on a regular basis with every one
of our spacecraft, so we're looking forward to getting it off the ground and
flying, and checking on the engineering data for the spacecraft later this
morning. The cruise to Mars will be about nine-and-a-half months, and then
we will go through the entry, descent landing, which is the big enchilada, if
you will, for the mission. That's where a lot of things have to happen,
have to happen well.
DILLER: And that happens when, about how far...
SEDIVY: That will be May 25th of 2008, will be landing day. And then
from there we begin the surface operations. So yeah, we have, from launch
forward, we have well over another year of work where we transition to the
operations phase.
DILLER: Well, Ed, thank you very much. We appreciate your discussion as
we looked through your, your work and achievements here to get ready for
the launch today, and best of luck.
SEDIVY: Oh, you're very welcome, George, and thanks for the opportunity
to talk about the program a little bit.
DILLER: Thank you.
SEDIVY: You're welcome.