This is Delta Launch Control at T-81 minutes and counting, and I have with me right now Jim Kennedy,
who is the center director at the Kennedy Space Center. Thanks for joining us, Jim.
It's a pleasure to be here, Bruce.
Jim, the Launch Services Program is handled out of KSC. But this mission involves a number of other facilities --
NASA facilities, as well as international partners. That's somewhat unique, and it's a project that we've had to do some coordination with.
This is a mission that has required considerable collaboration and coordination. I might mention from the outset, Bruce,
that this particular mission, the CALIPSO/CloudSat mission, commemorates a major milestone for the Launch Services Program.
This is the 50th mission managed since the work was consolidated at the Kennedy Space Center back in '98.
This particular mission is exciting to me because it represents the ultimate in collaboration.
For the first time that any of us can recall, there are four NASA centers involved: Langley, Goddard,
Jet Propulsion Lab and the Kennedy Space Center. I think the most on any previous mission was three, so we have four NASA centers.
We also enjoy the collaboration with our international partners. The P.I. from Colorado State University is Australian.
We're doing work with KNES, the French Space Agency, as well as the Canadian Space Agency. So it involves our industry partners,
four NASA centers, multiple nations as we attempt to explore the Earth from space and better understand weather and cloud formation.
Yes, sir. Well, you know, we, at the agency, at NASA, we also have a balance --
not only with the robotic spacecraft that we're sending up but with this human space craft and space flight activities.
Would you care to discuss the interaction and how that all, what it means and how it applies to the Vision for Space Exploration?
Yeah, I would love to. It was a little over 27 months ago the president announced,
what was then his Vision for Space Exploration has now been ratified by Congress, the American public, this nation and this world,
indeed, strongly stand behind the Vision for Space Exploration, which you indicated is a balance of human and robotic.
The human, we're grounded with the shuttle until the first of July, when we hope to launch STS-121. This mission is on the robotic side.
Robotic comes in two flavors, really: exploring the universe, like the missions we've sent -- MESSENGER to the planet Mercury,
Pluto New Horizons just in January to the faraway planet of Pluto.
This is an exciting mission in that it's considered robotic exploration but its robotic exploration of
planet Earth will improve the quality of life for all of us as we better understand weather,
weather formation and the impact that it has upon our lives.
Yes, sir. It's an important mission. We're looking forward to a good launch day.
And that launch is going to be coming out of this new Mission Director's Center here at Vandenberg. It's a pretty nice setup, isn't it?
Yeah, it's an honor to be here. This is the first use of the Mission Director's Center.
In fact, we had a ribbon cutting on Wednesday of this week. This center was developed with a guy named Steve Cox,
took the lead for NASA, worked with our contractor Analex, and they came in in only 14 months on budget.
It's the ability to bring data in a timely and accurate fashion to the engineers managing the console so that we can get a
good call for whether or not we're go for launch. And I'm proud to tell you here, at T-107 minutes and counting, we are go for launch tonight.
Yes, sir. Thank you. We look forward to a good liftoff, and good luck to you and the team.
Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate it.
Alright. Thank you.