GEORGE DILLER: This is Atlas launch control. We have with us NASA Launch Manager Chuck Dovale
to talk to us about the anomaly that scrubbed today's launch attempt of the Atlas V with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Chuck, we seem to have recovered from the thunderstorm overnight fairly well.
Things were going along right smartly until we got into the hydrogen tanking on Centaur. Can you explain what it was that happened?
CHUCK DOVALE: Okay, George. It was, the weather certainly provided a lot of opportunities for work and stress earlier in the night.
But as you say, we did recover from that and we'd gotten liquid oxygen loaded on both stages,
and as we were getting into the automatic loading of liquid hydrogen into Centaur,
we had the propellant loading system showing that the sensors were dry when some of the screens on the information,
the data that we were getting were showing wet,
so we had a discrepancy there. We backed out of that and went into a troubleshooting mode.
It wasn't really clear what, what the cause was.
One option we were going to do was to override the software, the automatic software and load manually.
And just to a percentage, just to see if our troubleshooting steps were heading in the right direction.
Subsequent to that, the additional software then locked us out of that manual loading.
So we got ourselves in a condition where we weren't quite sure what the cause was,
and we felt we didn't have enough time left in the window to pursue it any further.
So we're currently in a detanking mode, and we'll continue the troubleshooting and
hopefully resolve that and be able to attempt tomorrow.
DILLER: So, at this point, we know what happened, but we don't know why just yet. DOVALE: Correct.
DILLER: Alright, so right now, are they planning to roll the vehicle off the pad back to the Vertical Integration Facility,
do you know? DOVALE: No, we're planning to leave it out in hopes of a 24-hour turnaround.
And the launch vehicle and the spacecraft can support that.
DILLER: Alright. Well, we'll just stand by and hopefully that, this can be cleared in the
next 24 hours and that we'll be heading for a launch tomorrow at 7:43 a.m.
at the opening of a two-hour launch window that ends at 9:43. DOVALE: Correct.
DILLER: So Chuck, thank you very much for coming by and explaining this,
and hopefully we'll be talking to you after a successful launch tomorrow.
DOVALE: Okay, thanks George.
DILLER: This is Atlas launch control.