George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: This is Atlas Launch Control one hour,
50 minutes, 47 seconds into the mission of the TDRS-L, and joining us now here on
console is Tim Dunn, who is our NASA Launch Director tor this flight and the launch
manager during the countdown and Tim I wonder first of all, give us a snapshot of
how this looks like it's all turned out.
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Director: Well thanks George, thanks for having me,
and obviously we've shown some shots in the Launch Control Room and we're all
thrilled successful spacecraft separation, and most importantly,
a successful acquisition by our ground telemetry.
So, we've confirmed that we've got a healthy spacecraft so far, so the launch team is
thrilled and as you can imagine, the TDRS-L spacecraft team is even more thrilled.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: Well, take us back to the beginning of the
count and how did the countdown go and then how did the flight look.
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Director: Well, it was just gorgeous weather on the space
coast today, so it would have been a shame not to have gotten a launch off today.
So we were blessed with tremendous weather.
We have a wonderful rocket.
We did not work any hardware anomalies on the Atlas V launch vehicle.
Our spacecraft, the TDRS-L spacecraft was rock solid had zero problems with that.
We were working, as we came into the count today, one lingering concern that popped
up on the range yesterday with one range instrumentation site, and that being a radar
that is needed to track the rocket as it flies out over the Atlantic.
So the range team worked overnight and all through today to get us ready to enter our
countdown and was able to bring that asset back on line during the count for us to have
and it enabled us to launch today.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: And any further background on the short
recycle that we had?
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Director: Oh yeah, that uhÖso we get through the radar issue
that we had.
We had a nominal vehicle.
Everything looked great.
We're about ready to enter that final terminal count at T-minus four and counting and we
began to notice just about a minute prior to that that we're getting a little bit of
noisy data
coming back from our open loop spacecraft telemetry at the time.
And turns out we were getting a few spacecraft dropouts.
The spacecraft team needed a little bit more time.
We decided to remain in the T-minus four minute hold til we better understood that.
Turned out it was the uh, a situation with multipathing with the open loop RF
transmissions between the antenna located at TEL-4 and the Atlas V vehicle.
And so once that situation was well understood, we did discuss that on our anomaly net,
per our process, and we decided that we would, instead of staying open loop for the
next attempt, we would stay on our ground line telemetry, a hard line.
Obviously that was very clean data and we made the switch to the open loop RF at T-
zero, or at liftoff.
So, that was a great plan that the team came up with and we executed
that plan and got back in to the countdown, established a new T-zero at 33 minutes past
the hour and were able to execute that and had a beautiful liftoff.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: Well Tim this is just the start of a very busy
year for Launch Services Program.
So outline some of the missions we've got still
coming up.
I know Vern mentioned some of them, but it's uh we've got a lot of
missions coming.
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Director: Well, it is an exciting year for Launch Services
Program.
This being our first, we look to go to the West coast for a couple of Delta II
missions this year.
We have the OCO-2 mission that's going to launch on a Delta II from
Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex-2.
That happens this summer in July.
And then in the Fall, in November, we go back out to
Vandenberg for another Delta II mission, the SMAP mission.
And so we're excited to launch on a Delta II again, and it'll be about two-and-a-half
years since our last Delta II launch.
We also have another Atlas V mission that's
currently manifested for later in the year, the M-M-S mission on the East coast.
So, we've got a full slate of science missions ahead of us, and everyone in L-S-P is just
thrilled with the TDRS-L launch today.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: Well, Tim thanks very much and this has
certainly been a happy moment for the TDRS team because they're now a hundred
percent on the two they've got now on orbit for uhÖfor their program and maybe
another one coming downstream a ways.
But the two that they wanted right now they've
got right now.
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Director: Very good.
If I could George, I know you mentioned it
during the countdown, but this launch was dedicated to Skip Mackey.
A memorial launch.
Skip was a dear friend and colleague of ours and NASA.
And he was the voice of NASA commentary for years and years.
So, for Skip's family and his friends and all of his colleagues at NASA, we were very
proud along with U-L-A to dedicate this launch, this successful launch of
TDRS-L to Skip.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: Well it's very appropriate that it was a
tracking and data relay satellite, which is the kind of thing that, you know, was part
of
what he did.
Yes, tracking and data.
Well, on that event, I think we're pretty much we're going to wrap up our, our launch
and flight commentary here.
We've had a very successful mission.
TDRS-L is on its
own.
We're in contact with it on the ground.
And by all accounts this has been a very
successful launch and a flight today.
Tim, thanks very much and we'll see you at
Vandenberg.
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Director: Sounds good George.
George Diller/NASA Launch Commentator: And we're at one hour, 56 minutes,
50 seconds into the flight of TDRS-L.
This is Atlas Launch Control.