[meteorite-list] CONTOUR Update - July 2, 2002

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:00:04 2004
Message-ID: <200207021758.KAA18550_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.contour2002.org/news.php?id=9

CONTOUR Update
July 2, 2002

Start the Countdown!

>From a final fill up to a half-day's worth of system checkouts, CONTOUR's
last day on the ground includes a range of planned activity on the
launchpad and the spacecraft.

Fueling of the Delta II launch vehicle's first stage is scheduled to
start today at 6:30 p.m. EDT. The tower on Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station's Launch Pad 17A, weather permitting, would be rolled back
before 10 p.m.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft team plans to "power up" CONTOUR at 3 p.m. -
about 12 hours before liftoff - and once powered the craft will run a
computerized script that configures it for launch. Engineers will monitor
each of CONTOUR'ssubsystems until about seven minutes before launch; then
the spacecraft switches from an external power source to its own battery.

"Just before launch we turn off the telemetry systems and give the word
that the spacecraft is ready to go," says Ed Reynolds, CONTOUR's deputy
project manager and mission systems engineer from the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and will operate
CONTOUR.

Liftoff is scheduled for 2:47:41 a.m. EDT on July 3; forecasters for
the 45th Space Wingat Cape Canaveral Air Force Station estimate a 70
percent chance of favorable launch weather. NASA TV's live CONTOUR launch
coverage starts at 1 a.m. and continues until the spacecraft separates
from the launch vehicle, scheduled for 4 a.m. Watch it live on the
Web at

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/ .
Received on Tue 02 Jul 2002 01:58:14 PM PDT