GEORGE DILLER: Garrett Skrobot, who is the mission integration manager.
And Garrett, first of all, tell us so far this morning how you believe that the countdown has been going.
GARRETT SKROBOT: Well, George, it seems like everything's been going well.
At one point, we were a little bit ahead of schedule and at a stopping point and caught up,
and aircraft took off and we're on our way to the drop point.
DILLER: Well, let's look now at some of the processing of the ST5 and the Pegasus rocket.
We have some of the Pegasus being integrated, and perhaps you can walk us through this.
SKROBOT: OK, George. What we're looking at here is the Pegasus aft skirt being assembled onto the first stage of the launch vehicle.
These are Orbital technicians and engineers performing this work.
Here in a minute, you'll be seeing the installation of the rudders and the fins. And as you remember from previously, that this was the area we had an issue
with a few days ago that caused us to wait until today to, for an attempt. So here they are, they're lining up the fins,
and making careful that nothing inside the area is damaged or pinched or, make sure the clearances are proper.
And then they push it right up against there and they start bolting it in.
This takes quite a bit of time. Here we're going to take a look at the first stage being mated to the
second stage of the Pegasus, what we call stage two
and then this is stage three, going on with the avionics section on the front end of it.
This is carefully aligned and the technicians get ready to bolt it in, as you can see here.
Careful measurements are made at all the interface points to make sure everything's properly assembled.
And they bring the second stage into the first stage area here, and then they're slowly installing once again.
They'll attach it and bolt it in, and then flight separation point.
These are also Orbital engineers and technicians. Here we have the spacecraft being uncrated
over in 1555 and this happened about approximately January, mid-January time period.
DILLER: And 1555, I guess, that's the hangar, where the hangar is.
SKROBOT: That's the Orbital facility, yes. Previously the facility was over in 836, which is a NASA facility,
and they were right there about a month before this happened to
do their checkout. And they got loaded onto their dolly. This is the payload separation support structure
with the three spacecraft being moved over into their support dolly,
which will be able to maneuver the spacecraft around the facilities a little better. Once they get this bolted down, they'll remove the slings,
as you see here, and they'll move it over into the clean room tent and start what they call their functional testing,
to make sure that the spacecraft are still healthy after the transport
to transport from the previous facility. Resistive checks are made, and then flight functional checks are made.
And here we have what they call the "pop and catch test,"
is they're checking out their separation systems to make sure they work properly when they get on orbit.
DILLER: That's the separation mechanism of deployment.
SKROBOT: Yes it is. Here we see them taking the payload support structure and attaching it to the avionics section.
This is a unique system, because we're not separating from the Pegasus. The spacecraft's actually separating from their hardware themselves.
So, where this is a hardbolt to the Pegasus first stage...
DILLER: So they're on a carrier that's on top of the rocket and separating from that.
SKROBOT: Yes, the payload support structure, we call it. Once they get integrated onto the
Pegasus, they go into a black light to make sure the area's very clean and
there's no particles in. And you see here, we've got the first part of the fairing on. And the technicians are aligning it very carefully to make sure there's no
interference with the spacecraft and all the clearances are proper. This takes about a day to get this portion of the work done.
And then they'll slowly move it in, line it up and put it in position and then they'll bolt it in.
Now there's two parts of the fairing. You see here one half, the second half is over in the other clean area and it'll be wheeled over momentarily,
you'll see here. Doing the black light inspection once again and finishing up the bolting of the first half.
Here's the second half of the fairing, and you can see there's a liner inside of it. This helps with contamination and environmental constraints for the,
the spacecraft. The technician here, you can see, has got a wipe, they put alcohol on to remove any contamination that was on the fairing.
This is a slow process, and then the second half of the fairing is installed and then
the vehicle is put onto the transporter, in which it gets transported over to the L-1011 vehicle.
DILLER: And that's about how far, you'd guess, from the hangar out to the runway?
SKROBOT: I'm not sure there, George, on that one.
DILLER: I think it's probably on the order of at least a couple of miles, I think.
SKROBOT: Yeah. The, as you can see, that day was a weather climate day. It was raining a little bit on us and there were some delays,
but the team hung in there and was able to get the vehicle up underneath the L-1011.
It's a very slow process, make sure everything goes in and aligns very properly.
As you can see here, the L-1011 is jacked up so the Pegasus can fit up underneath it, and also the rear rudder has also been removed,
so it can also have clearance underneath the L-1011. And it gets put up inside the L-1011, and then the vehicle is lifted up from the carrier up to the
L-1011 and mated, and then they go back and install the rudder here.
And once again, these are the Orbital technicians and engineers performing these tasks for us.
And then they make sure that everything's ready, and then they'll take the L-1011 and lower it down off the jacks, and --
DILLER: And then is there a round of tests that they perform to make sure that it's connected?
SKROBOT: Yeah. Once the vehicle's connected to the L-1011, they do the CST test, combined systems testing, which verifies all the
mechanical electrical systems are operating properly for, for launch today.
DILLER: Well, Garrett, thanks very much, and it looks like we're, we're off on a good mission here today. No issues are at work and the aircraft continues to climb
to its 39,000-foot altitude. So, once again, thanks very much.
SKROBOT: Thank you, George.
DILLER: Our next, we have another Pegasus this year, later on?
SKROBOT: Later this year, the AIM mission is coming up. And it's end of fall this year.
DILLER: And then at that point, we'll be back. And thanks once again
SKROBOT: Alright, thank you, George.
DILLER: And we're now at 28 minutes before the launch of the Pegasus XL with ST5. This is Pegasus Launch Control.