George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: This is Delta Launch Control.
We're being
joined now by Tim Dunn, who is the NASA Launch Manager for today's countdown.
And Tim is going to try to give us some insight into exactly what it was that caused the
clock to cut off.
What it was the team saw that caused this scrub for today.
Tell us; maybe what we see is possibly what may have happened and then where we
go from here.
So Tim, if you could just tell us what it is you see happening.
Tim Dunn, NASA Launch Director: Okay George, Glad to do that.
Right now,
unfortunately, I have, uh, we have limited information until we get back out to the pad
and understand this.
But, I can explain is what we had was a mandatory called hold at
T-minus 45 seconds, when the facility engineer goes to activate the pulse suppression
water system at the launch mount area and the deluge system for water for SLC-2.
And what that deluge system does is it protects the launch mount from obviously the
high temperatures of launch and gives some amount of suppression from that huge
shock wave and the ignition of the engine.
So, what happens is we begin that water flow
at about T-minus 45 seconds.
And there's a verification step there immediately that the
engineer is looking for, uh, could not verify that his water system was operating
nominally, therefore it resulted in a mandatory hold.
It's one thing that the team is well
practiced in.
They know their systems very well.
They know the reaction of the system
in a nominal condition.
When they don't have the nominal conditions, they know to call
hold.
Unfortunately, that's what happened tonight.
It's a bit of a disappointment for the launch team when you have a great countdown up
to that point.
However, these are the things that we prepare for.
We're a professional
team.
We know how to handle this.
The team is currently in the process of recycling the
rocket.
You heard some of that probably on the countdown net.
What we need to do is
we safed all the systems on the rocket.
We need to now detank the liquid oxygen from
the first stage.
We'll then detank the RP-1 from the first stage.
We'll bring the mobile
service tower back around the rocket.
These activities take a number of hours.
And uh, so we'll get back into a configuration
where we can then re-enter the pad after we have safed all of the systems and once
we're able to re-enter the pad, and since this was a facility system, we can only do
limited troubleshooting from a distance.
We'll need to look and see what part of that
system malfunctioned to the extent that it caused this anomaly that resulted in the called
hold today.
George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: And do we know where on that pad that
particular system is located?
Tim Dunn, NASA Launch Director: It's at the launch mount area.
Right at the base of the
rocket.
George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: So, well than what�.We don't know then
exactly when our next launch attempt will be, but what are the options.
Tim Dunn, NASA Launch Director: What we do is given a situation like this is we go
ahead and we have told the team we're executing steps to protect an attempt for
tomorrow.
What we call a 24-hour recycle, 24-hour turnaround.
So we are doing that.
Obviously once we understand the situation, with the facility better, we will either be
able to confirm that we can repair and press on to attempt tomorrow evening, er�or
early tomorrow morning.
Or we need to go into more of a maybe a 48-hour and plan for
a little bit longer.
We'll have a little bit more information later once we're able to evaluate
the system properly.
But right now, we've got the team leaning forward and preparing
for a 24-hour recycle with a launch attempt on July 2.
George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: All right Tim, thank you very much and we'll stand
by to learn more about why what
happened happened, because if we simply know what didn't work but we just don't fully
understand why this didn't operate as it was supposed to, when it was supposed to.
Tim Dunn, NASA Launch Director: Correct.
George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: Thanks Tim.
And we'll just kind of watch for
developments.
Thank you very much.
This is Delta Launch Control.