Mike Curie/NASA Launch Commentator: This is Atlas Launch Control at a mission elapsed
time of 3
hours, 35 minutes and 48 seconds.
It's been a long day; it's been a long day here in the Atlas Spacecraft
Operations Center for the launch team and we're pleased at this point to be joined by
the NASA launch
manager from NASA's Launch Services Program here at Kennedy Space Center, Omar Baez.
Good
evening, Omar.
Omar Baez/NASA Launch Manager: Thank you, Mike.
Mike Curie/NASA Launch Commentator: We thought we would have you about an hour earlier than
we
do at this point.
But it turned out to be kind of a longer day than you anticipated.
Can you tell us a little
bit about that?
Omar Baez/NASA Launch Manager: Sure.
It's been a long two days.
You know, we start this at L-minus
two days.
We started yesterday with rolling the vehicle out, and it took us a long time.
We had a traction
device that was supposed to help two other of the traction devices, and this one was
stubborn and
wouldn't start.
And so it just snowballed from there.
So the guys really worked hard through the day
yesterday and into the night, came back early this morning.
And we were behind by quite a bit and were
able to catch up and work through some issues not only on the range but with some of the
GSE.
Mike Curie/NASA Launch Commentator: Ground support equipment.
Omar Baez/NASA Launch Manager: Ground support equipment.
And then, were even affected by
something that was going on on one of the other pads at the very end there.
So it was like doing one of
our dress rehearsals - we just went through about everything you could imagine, except
for actual
problems with the flight hardware.
The flight hardware performed beautifully throughout the count,
and the weather was perfect.
But the culmination of all those low-level issues caused us to consume
most of the hour window that we had -- in fact, all of it.
So once we targeted the end of the window, we
were able to hit it.
A couple minutes ago here, you probably heard some shouting and so forth, and that
was just congratulatory -- you know, the spacecraft separated.
Quite a long mission from the time of
launch to separation, three-and-a-half hours.
That's unusual for normal NASA missions, which are
usually about an hour and a half between the time we launch to the time we actually separate
the
spacecraft.
But all is going well.
Mike Curie/NASA Launch Commentator: It was a beautiful launch and it looked like everything
went
well.
The Atlas booster performed perfectly and the Centaur completed three perfect burns.
And it
sounds like, from what Marty Malinowski was saying, the spacecraft is nearly exactly where
it's
supposed to be in space.
Omar Baez/NASA Launch Manager: Yeah, the numbers that I saw on the orbits were down to the
two-
decimal level, which was awesome, considering how far away from the Earth this satellite's
at right now.
Mike Curie/NASA Launch Commentator: And this is continuing the trend of a 100 percent success
rate
for the Atlas V launch vehicle.
Omar Baez/NASA Launch Manager: Yeah, we say that.
But it's always one at a time.
And this one was
certainly up to its challenges.
Hopefully nine months from now we'll have an asset up in space that will
help our weather forecasters and what they do on a daily basis and bring them up to the
20th century as
far as having almost closed-circuit TV on what the weather's doing from that high up.
So, it's fantastic.
Mike Curie/NASA Launch Commentator: This is the start of its long mission -- possibly
up to 20 years
of providing color, high-speed imagery and data back to folks on the Earth to help save
lives.
So thank
you for getting us off the ground today, and thank you once again for your time, Omar.
Omar Baez/NASA Launch Manager: Thank you, Mike.