GEORGE DILLER: This is Pegasus Launch Control at T-55 minutes, 15 seconds and counting. Here now in the Mission Director's Center, we're joined by Art
Azarbarzin, the ST5 project manager. And Art, welcome. A few anxious moments here before departure,
but I guess that's what makes it fun. But at any rate, on the Pegasus is ST5 and we have some video of the ST5 processing,
I guess from the day that it arrived here at Vandenberg up to the time that it went over to be mated to the Pegasus.
So we're going to roll that now, and if you could kind of tell us what we're seeing as we go along...
ART AZARBARZIN: Yeah, we shipped our spacecraft from the East Coast on Dec. 2 and this was an Airide that is temperature-controlled.
You know, it is shock-resistance. Basically, we shipped everything and arrived on 8-36, over the weekend, by Monday,
and then the crew started unpacking everything. And this is, the blue item we just saw, that's the three spacecraft
that are mounted on one platform. This is the three spacecraft, we mounted them all on one platform and had them all wrapped.
And now they're moving them, and they all have their, the GSE handling, so that's how the technicians are placing them on the tables.
And all the ground strap that you see all mounted, to make sure that everything is properly grounded when they handle the spacecraft.
This was basically in the clean room, we have a 10K clean room. Now you see them, they're trying to rotate it,
and then the red covers that you see, those are the solar array covers we have for protection during the handling of the spacecraft.
Once we do the rotation, and then we can mount it and then take all the GSE items off of it so we can start processing it.
This all happened in building 836 and roughly each test, you know, took us all the way through middle of Jan. 17, when we, you know,
completed all these testing at building 836. This container contained our Pegasus support structure and that's,
we shipped that separately and then we did all the installation of the satellites into that
rack after we completed all the testing on the spacecraft.
DILLER: So that's what they're resting on when they're deployed.
AZARBARZIN: Right. Right now they're just deploying it. And then they just, they have to rotate it because of the way it was shipped,
for packaging. So they rotated it up, so it's facing up. And then, after that, they take the cover off and we do a lot of cleaning,
and then we, basically, after we completed all the spacecraft testing, we did the installation,
one by one we installed them into that rack. Right now, they are just moving stuff in position
as you see, right now they don't have the spacecraft in there. And then we have this, the lifting fixture to install
the spacecraft on them. So there's just one spacecraft being installed into that Pegasus support structure.
And then once we installed all of them into that structure, then what we did was, we do obviously first motion,
but right now they're just installed one, and then they tighten them.
And they do, we do the hydro-sets, which is, make sure the precision movement on the spacecraft and there's
no jerking motion, that make sure we avoid contacts.
DILLER: Now which one will come off first, the one at the very back or the one in the front?
AZARBARZIN: The one in the front. In the front, the one that faces -- The ring is the back end.
The ring that you saw, that's, that's what we call the aft spacecraft. That's the one on your left,
that would be the aft spacecraft. And then there's a mid, and then the forward.
DILLER: The forward comes off first.
AZARBARZIN: The forward comes off first, then mid, and then aft. So right now, the forward is being installed,
which was the last one installed. And after we did that, then what we did, what we call either first motion or pop and catch,
depending what everyone is familiar with. And then that's what they're doing right now,
this is called pop and catch, that we just do one first motion and then we restow it, and we did it on every spacecraft.
DILLER: So that's a deployment check.
AZARBARZIN: That's a deployment check. That's all, so we did all the rotation stuff, at a launch site,
a lot of people call it first motion, we just call it pop and catch. You know, it's the same thing.
We just do the first thing, make sure it releases successfully, and then we restow them.
And that was done a couple times actually, here at the launch site. And this time, we're just weighing
it because of mass properties, we had the requirements, we had the tight requirements.
So we did weigh the spacecraft after all the flight articles were done. And after we were done, we put it back on the GSE fixture,
so we complete the rest of the processing before we ship it back to the, to the 1555.
So this is as we were completed, we put it in a shipping container, and then this is what the, the technicians right
now are doing to lower it to getting prepared to be shipped to 1555 to be mated.
And as we were done, we trucked it back up the road, which is about a 10- to 15-minute ride between the two buildings,
and then this is how it's leaving to go to building 1555.
DILLER: Well, once we come off the Pegasus today, what will be your very first contact with the spacecraft
to let you know that it's there and it's where it's supposed to be?
AZARBARZIN: Our first scheduled contact is with McMurdough ground station, which occurs about 30 minutes after launch.
And that's about a 30-minute window. So we'll contact, we're scheduled to contact with two of the spacecraft,
however that's not our mandatory station. That's just one of the...
DILLER: The main one is deep space network.
AZARBARZIN: The main one is the one that comes about an hour and a half after launch, and that's Madrid.
And that's also a 30-minute window that we try to contact two of the spacecraft.
So, and then the third one is Canberra, which is about two and a half hours after launch,
and that is a shorter window, about a 15-minute window just because the time where we are in orbit,
our viewing are and our restriction of that allows us only a 15-minute contact versus a 30-minute on the other stations.
DILLER: How soon after the launch were your actual science operations, your 90-day mission begin?
AZARBARZIN: Well, the first week is really the intense week for our checkouts.
We do the first couple days we do, make sure, checkout on the spacecraft, make sure everything is working OK.
And then we do our boom deployments for the next couple of days, and then after that,
basically what we do is we make sure the spacecraft is aligned correctly,
and it's supposed to do it by itself but if it doesn't, we make adjustments.
But after day seven is we enter the science validation, we have the alignment,
make sure the alignment is correct before, with the sun and everything, before we start our science validation process.
And that will be starting at day eight.
DILLER: Day eight. Well, Art, thank you very much, and best of luck. And we'll be looking forward to,
I guess we're about 45 minutes away, and the mission is, the mission is on. Thank you very much.
AZARBARZIN: Thank you. DILLER: Thanks.