George Diller/IRIS Launch Commentator: This is Pegasus Launch Control at an elapsed time of 21 minutes,
42 seconds into the flight of the IRIS spacecraft.
And now joining us here at the console is Tim Dunn, our NASA launch director for tonight's mission.
And, Tim, first of all tell us briefly what you know about the spacecraft at this point.
Tim Dunn/NASA Launch Manager: So, George, we're thrilled.
We're very excited Spacecraft � we've made initial contact with it through the TDRS network.
Gotten good data back.
The solar arrays did begin to deploy and everything is proceeding right on track with the nominal,
expected timeline after spacecraft separation from Pegasus.
Diller: Tell us about the flight. Early on it seemed to go well.
And then it got interesting toward the end in terms of what we were able to learn.
Can you give us some insight on that?
Dunn: It was a thrilling afternoon here at Vandenberg Air Force Base as we watched the
L-1011 prepare to take off and head out over
the Pacific Ocean and head northwest, make its turn.
We had relatively few issues. One minor range asset,
located down at Point Mugu, gave us a little bit of trouble,
but were were able to bring that back in online.
We experienced a little bit of signal issue with our FTS system.
You may have heard the AGCs were erratic at times.
the aircraft in relation to the ground assets here at Vandenberg and the Western Range.
Once we made the turn, coming back toward the south, AGCs locked in very well.
We were able to do those final FTS checks � no problem.
Diller: Automatic Gain Control �
Dunn: Yeah, Automatic Gain Control on those AGC values, right.
So, that put us minutes away from launch.
One of the critical events that happen with Pegasus is activate a
thermal battery onboard Pegasus that is able to move the fins on the rudder of the vehicle.
So we made that activation at approximately 45 seconds prior to drop.
And you may have heard the repeated call about "fin sweep, fin sweep."
That's not fully unexpected. We don't typically see that in flight,
but the procedure does account for it. And we reissued the can't man numerous times.
And, I think it was on about the fifth reissuance of that command we did get
movement of the fins. And once you get initial movement verified,
you know you're going to be good for flight.
So, we got though that, it was a very tense moment,
as you can imagine, here in the control center.
But once we cleared that, we were about 30 seconds away from launch.
Had a nominal drop from the L-1011. We had a nominal ignition.
First, second and third stage burns were all very good.
You may have heard, we did loose downrange telemetry real time.
We did have an aircraft in the Pacific Ocean downrange that was scheduled �
that did pick up telemetry data from Pegasus.
However, due to an onboard issue, they were not able to retransmit that data to us live.
We do have that recorded on the aircraft and we'll be reviewing
that when the plane lands and we get those tapes.
Diller: Alright, I think were watching for some video from the
L-1011 about to touch down back here at Vandenberg.
The indication, though, we had a good flight actually came in from the
Tracking and Data Relay Satellite told us the satellite was,
I guess, the satellite where it should be when it should be.
Dunn: We were able to conform we had a nominal spacecraft separation from Pegasus,
even though we didn't have the downrange telemetry asset,
we did have the on orbit TDRS network of satellites.
And they were able to pick up and confirm spacecraft separation and turn
on and give us that initial indication that all the initial sequence,
including solar array deployment was nominal.
Diller: That's our chase plane coming back, that provided the video to us of the deployment and drop.
Dunn: I'd like to thank our friends at Dryden for supplying us with the beautiful,
onboard chase video that we were able to see all afternoon.
Diller: So the chase plane is on the ground, the L-1011 won't be far behind.
So, Tim, we'd like to thank, thank you very much for giving us a status.
It appears we've had a successful launch. And, at this point,
it appears we've got a happy spacecraft on orbit.
Dunn: We've got a very happy spacecraft on orbit.
We've got a thrilled launch team on the ground.
And this has been just a great couple of weeks we've had here at Vandenberg.
Would like to thank Col. Boltz, 30th Space Wing commander.
His team provided exceptional support to us.
We worked through a couple of difficulties on the range,
but only cost us one day. And here we are with a successful launch on a backup day.
We're very happy. Would like to give a shout out to Albert Sierra.
Albert, I hope you are still watching us from Brevard County. We miss you and we love you.
Diller: Albert Sierra is one of our mission managers at
Kennedy Space Center and is key to the Launch Services Program.
And he has had a setback, but hope will bring him back on to the team very shortly.
Dunn: Absolutely.
Diller: So, at this point we are getting ready to show our launch replays.
And we're also going to keep an eye out for the L-1011 arriving back here at Vandenberg.
And once we get though that, we'll be wrapping up our broadcast.
Right now we are at 27 minutes, 59 seconds into the IRIS mission. This is Pegasus launch control.