Here joining us now in Firing Room 4 is Robbie Ashley. He's the payload manager for STS-115, and Robbie's going
to be talking to a video that we have of some of the work that's been done to get the truss
segments and the solar arrays ready for the installation into the payload bay.
So if we can roll the tape, Robbie can tell us what's happening.
OK. Right here we have NASA's Super Guppy aircraft landing at the Shuttle Landing Facility and it is,
it's bringing the P3 element to KSC, and that was back in November of 1999.
And now they're, they're, with this aircraft, the entire nose of the plane opens up, as you can see, to get access to the cargo bay.
And there you see, in the cargo bay, is the shipping fixture with the P3 element in it.
This element was designed by, at the time, McDonnell Douglas out in Huntington Beach, Calif.,
and the primary structure was manufactured there and secondary structure in Tulsa before shipping it to KSC.
And now you're looking at, this is the P4 element when it arrived at the Kennedy Space Center
and this was in July of 2000, and as you can see, it came by ground transportation.
So we're bringing the shipping container into the Space Station Processing Facility airlock.
And now the technicians are preparing to remove the P4 element and removing it from the shipping container.
And we're preparing to transfer it down to the other end of the, or the east end of the building,
and, and that's where it basically stayed since it arrived in 2000. So, a little over six years it was, spent down the east side.
As you can see, when it arrived, it was, had pretty much bare structure and we populated it with all the electronics after it arrived here.
Now this is the P3 element being brought over from the O&C Building,
where it began its processing and this is in March of 2001 after we had completed the stand-alone testing over in the O&C Building.
We're bringing it over to meet up with P4.
And this is fast-forward all the way to 2005. A decision was made by the space station program manager
to remove the old batteries off of the P4 and replace them with new ones. So we're, right now what you're seeing is
removing one of the solar array wings to get access to the batteries and placing that wing back in its wing stand while we work on the batteries.
Now the technicians are preparing to remove one of the flight batteries off of the P4 element.
In total, we removed 12 batteries and replaced them with new ones. There's one you see coming off now.
So the technicians are taking the batteries and putting them back in their shipping containers and, actually,
the 12 batteries we removed from P4, we sent two of them out to Houston to be used in the test lab out
there where they test the station power systems to simulate a testing out there.
And the rest of them were sent back to Space Systems/Loral in California,
and we're actually going to recycle and reuse some of the parts.
Now we finished replacing the batteries on the bottom deck of the element, which is actually up right now on the top.
And we're getting ready to rotate the element back to its normal orientation, with the upper deck in the up position.
This stand that we're using and that you're seeing there, we brought in specifically to have the
capability to do this rotation to change out or replace batteries if asked to do so,
and it turns out that, that that's what we were asked to do.
There you can see the element vertical in the SSPF. It's quite a, quite an experience of seeing the
element rotating end over end, as you've seen there. Now it's back in its normal orientation and from that point,
we went to work on the upper deck, putting the new batteries on and replacing the, the solar array on the upper deck.
Now this is the day that we're actually leaving the SSPF, starting our journey to the launch pad, and all of the work has been done.
The element has been retested and checked out and it's all ready for flight.
So we're now placing it in, in the payload transportation canister to start its journey to the launch pad after almost seven years at,
at the SSPF or in Kennedy Space Center. Here we are vertical in the payload canister at the canister rotation facility,
starting that roll out to the pad. This is on July 26 and we're beginning our journey there.
We are atop the canister transporter en route to the pad. So it's very early in the morning and, and we're on to the pad.
You can see the launch pad lit in the background on our way to the launch pad.
Now we're at the pad surface and getting ready to be lifted up to
the payload changeout room, which is on the 135-ft. level there of the rotating service structure of the launch pad.
As you can see now, we're being hoisted up into position to be inserted in the payload changeout room.
And that's, that's basically where we will wait for the orbiter to arrive, and that's when they insert us into the orbiter's payload bay.
So, Robbie, your team's been together for how long working on this?
Well, we've been working on this hardware, it's been here for, you know, like I said, almost seven years for the
P3 element and just over six years for P, for P4. The team was actually together for, you know, for a couple years before that,
preparing, some part of the team was preparing for these new elements to arrive. And part of the team that's stayed
with us actually worked on the 3A and 3, and 4A missions hardware (the Z1 truss and the P6 truss).
So, it's been over a decade, really, that, that the team has been together working, preparing these elements for launch.
Well, Robbie, I know they'll be glad to see the liftoff when it occurs and most certainly when the truss is mated to the station,
because that's what this is all about that the team's been pursuing.
Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, we're excited to be here today and on the brink of launch, but for our team,
what'll really bring closure for us after all this time is, is seeing the element on orbit, on the International Space Station,
and doing the mission that it was intended to do. And it's at that point, once we see that, that we'll be able to look ahead, look down
the road and start working on the next space station element our team will be getting ready for launch, actually in February of '07.
Well, Robbie, thank you very much. We appreciate your, your discussion of the processing flow for this and best of luck. Thank you.
Well, thank you, George. I appreciate you having me over to talk, talk with you today.
We're at T-44 minutes, 25 seconds and counting. This is Shuttle Launch Control.