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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

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Azarbarzin, the ST5 project manager. And Art, welcome. A few anxious moments here before departure,

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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,

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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.

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So we're going to roll that now, and if you could kind of tell us what we're seeing as we go along...

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ART AZARBARZIN: Yeah, we shipped our spacecraft from the East Coast on Dec. 2 and this was an Airide that is temperature-controlled.

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You know, it is shock-resistance. Basically, we shipped everything and arrived on 8-36, over the weekend, by Monday,

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and then the crew started unpacking everything. And this is, the blue item we just saw, that's the three spacecraft

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that are mounted on one platform. This is the three spacecraft, we mounted them all on one platform and had them all wrapped.

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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.

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And all the ground strap that you see all mounted, to make sure that everything is properly grounded when they handle the spacecraft.

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This was basically in the clean room, we have a 10K clean room. Now you see them, they're trying to rotate it,

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and then the red covers that you see, those are the solar array covers we have for protection during the handling of the spacecraft.

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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.

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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,

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completed all these testing at building 836. This container contained our Pegasus support structure and that's,

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we shipped that separately and then we did all the installation of the satellites into that

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rack after we completed all the testing on the spacecraft.

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DILLER: So that's what they're resting on when they're deployed.

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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,

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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,

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and then we, basically, after we completed all the spacecraft testing, we did the installation,

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one by one we installed them into that rack. Right now, they are just moving stuff in position

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as you see, right now they don't have the spacecraft in there. And then we have this, the lifting fixture to install

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the spacecraft on them. So there's just one spacecraft being installed into that Pegasus support structure.

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And then once we installed all of them into that structure, then what we did was, we do obviously first motion,

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but right now they're just installed one, and then they tighten them.

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And they do, we do the hydro-sets, which is, make sure the precision movement on the spacecraft and there's

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no jerking motion, that make sure we avoid contacts.

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DILLER: Now which one will come off first, the one at the very back or the one in the front?

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AZARBARZIN: The one in the front. In the front, the one that faces -- The ring is the back end.

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The ring that you saw, that's, that's what we call the aft spacecraft. That's the one on your left,

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that would be the aft spacecraft. And then there's a mid, and then the forward.

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DILLER: The forward comes off first.

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AZARBARZIN: The forward comes off first, then mid, and then aft. So right now, the forward is being installed,

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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,

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depending what everyone is familiar with. And then that's what they're doing right now,

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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.

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DILLER: So that's a deployment check.

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AZARBARZIN: That's a deployment check. That's all, so we did all the rotation stuff, at a launch site,

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a lot of people call it first motion, we just call it pop and catch. You know, it's the same thing.

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We just do the first thing, make sure it releases successfully, and then we restow them.

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And that was done a couple times actually, here at the launch site. And this time, we're just weighing

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it because of mass properties, we had the requirements, we had the tight requirements.

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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,

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so we complete the rest of the processing before we ship it back to the, to the 1555.

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So this is as we were completed, we put it in a shipping container, and then this is what the, the technicians right

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now are doing to lower it to getting prepared to be shipped to 1555 to be mated.

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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,

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and then this is how it's leaving to go to building 1555.

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DILLER: Well, once we come off the Pegasus today, what will be your very first contact with the spacecraft

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to let you know that it's there and it's where it's supposed to be?

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AZARBARZIN: Our first scheduled contact is with McMurdough ground station, which occurs about 30 minutes after launch.

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And that's about a 30-minute window. So we'll contact, we're scheduled to contact with two of the spacecraft,

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however that's not our mandatory station. That's just one of the...

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DILLER: The main one is deep space network.

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AZARBARZIN: The main one is the one that comes about an hour and a half after launch, and that's Madrid.

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And that's also a 30-minute window that we try to contact two of the spacecraft.

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So, and then the third one is Canberra, which is about two and a half hours after launch,

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and that is a shorter window, about a 15-minute window just because the time where we are in orbit,

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our viewing are and our restriction of that allows us only a 15-minute contact versus a 30-minute on the other stations.

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DILLER: How soon after the launch were your actual science operations, your 90-day mission begin?

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AZARBARZIN: Well, the first week is really the intense week for our checkouts.

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We do the first couple days we do, make sure, checkout on the spacecraft, make sure everything is working OK.

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And then we do our boom deployments for the next couple of days, and then after that,

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basically what we do is we make sure the spacecraft is aligned correctly,

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and it's supposed to do it by itself but if it doesn't, we make adjustments.

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But after day seven is we enter the science validation, we have the alignment,

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make sure the alignment is correct before, with the sun and everything, before we start our science validation process.

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And that will be starting at day eight.

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DILLER: Day eight. Well, Art, thank you very much, and best of luck. And we'll be looking forward to,

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I guess we're about 45 minutes away, and the mission is, the mission is on. Thank you very much.

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AZARBARZIN: Thank you.  DILLER: Thanks.

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