George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator This is Taurus Launch Control at T-1 hour, 20 minutes, 35 seconds and counting.
And here with us in the Mission Director's Center is Dr. Ralph Basilio.
He is the deputy project manager for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and our spacecraft mission director on console
tonight who will be providng us with the "go" for launch for the OCO spacecraft.
And Dr. Basilio, we would like to welcome you. First of all, tell us how things are going tonight so far from your perspective.
Dr. Ralph Basilio/NASA Spacecraft Mission Manager Yeah. Things are going quite well.
We've completed the checkouts with the Mission Operations Center and the ground network and space network assets.
So, all systems are operational. The observatory is in generally good health.
We are monitoring the battery temperatures -- make sure that we don't exceed the defined alarm limits or constraints for launch.
We don't anticipate any problems, but we are closely monitoring the battery temperature at this time.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator Well, we've got a video now that shows some of what was done to prepare the OCO
spacecraft for launch once it arrived here at Vandenberg.
So if you could tell us some of what's going on in that tape and some of the other things surrounding the background of OCO.
Dr. Ralph Basilio/NASA Spacecraft Mission Manager Ok, great.
Yes, this is a short video of some of the payload processing activities that occurred here at the launch site at
Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast.
The observatory was shipped over land from the Orbital facility in Dulles, Va. Took about three days to get here.
The observatory arrived on the 11th of November.
And the payload processing facility that was selected for our operations is Astrotech Space Operations,
and it's been the facility that we just recently used several months ago to process the OSTM,
or the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, spacecraft. So a lot of our personnel that are on this project,
also worked that project and very familiar with the facilities there.
As you can see that the observatory, after being transported, is being unpacked and being wheeled into the,
one of the two high bays in the Atrotech Space Operations facility.
It's double bagged to make sure that the spacecraft, or the observatory, remains healthy and safe -- protected against
contaminants -- both particulates, as well as helium and other trace gases.
And you can see here, this is the anti-stat bagging that's being removed.
And the spacecraft, or the observatory, will be revealed.
But underneath the bagging that protects the observatory, there are other measures to further protect the observatory.
You'll see that they'll actually start removing some of the protective covers -- there's a
protective cover, or element, that protects the triple-junction gallium arsenide solar cells.
The solar arrays are obviously in a stowed position during transportation and during launch.
You can see one of the solar array wings here in the stowed position.
Once fully deployed, the solar arrays will actually expand out and the wingspan is on
the order of about nine meters, or a little bit less than 30 feet.
You can see this gentleman, one of the technicians, removing a cover for the instrument calibration baffle assembly.
And once they've completed all of the unbagging, unwrapping and cover-removal process,
we actually subject the observatory through additional testing to make sure that it's still
functioning after the three-day ride, or transit, across country.
And once this additional testing is completed, we then fuel the observatory for
flight. This is a hydrazine system that's used for the observatory.
So we, after the fueling operations was completed, we put on board on the order of 45 kilograms of hydrazine fuel.
Now that fuel will allow operations to far exceed the nominal two-year mission.
We actually anticipate that we'll have enough fuel for more than a decade.
And you can see the team here is now is getting ready for the next set of operations -- our critical operations -- and it's
basically to mate the observatory with the upper stage components of the launch vehicle.
There are some specialized components on the upper half of the launch vehicle -- and
there's a ballast ring, a cone section -- but probably the most significant,
or special part, of that upper stage component assembly is what is called the soft ride vibration isolation system.
It's regarded, or it could be referred to as basically a large shock absorber to minimize any stresses -- mechanical induced,
static and dynamic stresses on the observatory during the relatively quick ascent.
We expect the four-stage Taurus XL launch vehicle to inject the observatory into its proper orbit in just a little over 13 minutes.
You can see here the mating operations being completed. And the two halves of the fairing are now being installed.
The fairing basically provides protection for the observatory -- basically for aerodynamic
protection during the launch vehicle ascent into the proper orbit.
Once the fairing has been installed, we refer to this entire assembly as the ECE, or the encapsulated cargo element.
And the encapsulated cargo element is actually kept in an environment that's conducive to space or safe operations.
So temperature, humidity and nitrogen purge are provided to the encapsulated cargo
element all the way up through T-0, which is basically launch.
So the observatory is in a cocoon -- kept in an environment that keeps it safe and well protected from the elements.
Obviously this encapsulated cargo element will be exposed to the weather while the launch vehicle is out there at the pad.
And you can see here, that the encapsulated cargo element is being placed on a truck and
the process of trucking it over from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to the launch pad,
which is Launch Complex 576-E, just took a little bit more than an hour.
It's approximately a two-mile-long trek. And Launch Complex 576-E was last used on May 20, 2004, for the last, or the previous,
Taurus XL launch for the ROCSAT-2 mission. So it's been refurbished, obviously since then.
And you can see that the encapsulated cargo element has arrived at the launch site,
and one of the first activities is obviously to remove it and integrate it with the rest of the launch vehicle.