This is Delta launch control at T minus 36 minutes 55 seconds and counting and everything continues to go well with our launch activities this
morning for the launch of the CALIPSO and Cloudsat spacecraft aboard a Delta II from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The launch remains on schedule for 3:02 AM this morning. I have with me, right now,
Ron Boain from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ron is the CloudSat mission director. Ron, thanks for joining us.
Yes, thank you, Bruce, for having me.
Let's start out by having you give us just a short overview of the CloudSat mission. What's CloudSat going to be doing do for us?
Sure. No problem. Well, CloudSat, like the CALIPSO mission, is primarily focused on clouds, but one of the differences is that
we carry a radar, a 94 gigahertz radar - the first ever flown in space - and we use that radar to quite literally look at the water content of clouds.
That is to say that we, with the radar, are able to see liquid water and ice water in the clouds in a three dimensional or vertical
aspect as we move over the surface of the Earth. Our radar propagates down from the antenna to the nadir and the reflection
off of the water droplets and the ice crystals is recorded by our radar to give us the first ever measurement of water in clouds.
Okay, well, that sounds very interesting and useful as far as helping predict the weather and understanding our climatology.
Now, once CloudSat, once the spacecraft is in orbit what is going to be happening over the next several days or several weeks?
What's the checkout process?
Well, sure. After the separation this morning, which is about an hour and 37 minutes after launch,
about 34 minutes after the CALIPSO separation, the two spacecraft will essentially be in the same orbit.
A slightly different orbit will be moving together and over the next 30 days or so, we will be coordinating maneuvers and we will
be positioning ourselves into the afternoon constellation, sometimes called the A-train, where we will then make coordinated observations,
both between CloudSat and CALIPSO and with the Aqua and Aura spacecraft and the Parasol spacecraft, which are already in the A-train.
That will be, it will take us roughly 32-33 days to achieve that state. Once we are at that state,
the radar will be turned on and it remains operational for the rest of the mission.
Okay. So, we are going to be getting some data fairly quickly - within 30 days.
Are we going to be staying in constant touch with this spacecraft?
Well, it turns out that our operations partner on this project is the United States Air Force.
We are operating this mission out of the RC in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Kirtlin Air Force Base and in fact the project manager,
Tom Livermore, has already left the Vandenberg site and has traveled to Albuquerque and I've been on the line tonight with him and
he's standing on station down there as the CloudSat projects operations director. Operating through the Air Force, the CloudSat has approximately
seven to ten opportunities for contacts with tracking stations per day.
So, that is how we retrieve and command, retrieve data from the spacecraft and command the spacecraft.
Very good. And I know we just over an hour from launch this morning and there is a lot of work to be done.
Are there any issues being discussed with this spacecraft itself?
No, I'm happy to report that all of our prior issues have been resolved. Most of them were quite minor anyway. So, we are good to go.
Okay.
We're eager to get on orbit and begin this mission.
Alright, sir. Well, I know we still have a lot of work to do before we get there, but good luck to you and your team and have a good launch.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Thank you.