Marie Lewis, NASA Communications: From NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, you’re
watching live coverage of the Parker Solar Probe mission to unlock mysteries of the Sun’s
atmosphere.
Good morning, I’m Marie Lewis.
Thanks for waking up super early with us.
We have team coverage of today’s launch from a viewing area near the iconic Vehicle
Assembly Building and from our reporters and commentators at the mission director center.
But first, Parker Solar Probe is targeted to launch at 3:53 this morning eastern time
from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The launch window is 65 minutes long.
Parker will take off on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, speeding up to 430,000
miles per hour in orbit.
That’s fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in just one second.
It will travel seven times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before.
Parker will help us understand how the Sun affects weather in space.
Coming up, we’ll find out how that space weather can impact our satellites and how
Parker will manage to get so close to our star without burning up.
But first, we are now about 51 minutes from launch.
Let’s check in with NASA’s Josh Finch and Mic Woltman in Kennedy’s mission director
center for an update on the count.
Hi, guys.
NASA Launch Commentator Josh Finch: Good morning, Marie, I’m Joshua Finch and I’m joined
today by Mic Woltman.
Mic Woltman, NASA Launch Services Program: Good morning, Josh.
I’m happy to be here today representing NASA’s Launch Services Program, thank you.
Finch: Glad to have you with us.
We started out this morning with a 65-minute window.
But now, we’re sitting at about 45 minutes of our window, and Mic, can you tell us a
little bit more about that.
Woltman: Yes, Josh, United Launch Alliance and the NASA launch teams got on station about
six hours ago; the teams have been working diligently through some minor issues that
occurred with some ground support equipment prior to MST roll earlier this evening.
And they got through that and MST roll occurred, and then the team started working through
the launch procedure.
As they were doing that, they noticed some sensor data that they really didn’t like
so they started looking at that.
Performed a little troubleshooting on the vehicle — they wanted to make sure all of
that was working prior to going into the cryogenic load early this morning.
So once they got that all done, they were ready to proceed forward.
So that delayed cryo load just a little bit.
With that, the cryo poll was taken to enter into the loading procedure.
And NASA’s Launch Manager Omar Baez and ULA’s Launch Director Lou Mangieri coordinated
a new T-0 to help make up and get things processing back on a nominal timeline for 3:53 a.m. this
morning.
Finch: So we do still have 45 minutes remaining in our window, should the launch teams need
more time.
You’re looking at a live shot of the Delta IV Heavy rocket with the additional third
state at Space Launch Complex 37.
The weather for today has actually been improving.
We started out late yesterday with some storms in the area.
But those have since cleared out and our weather has actually improved throughout the count.
Our winds are at 5 knots out of the west.
Temperature right now is about 78, 79 degrees.
The concerns that we were looking at earlier were cumulus clouds, detached anvil clouds,
with a probability of violation of 10 percent — that’s actually been reduced to now
5 percent, so that means we have 95 percent chance of favorable weather for launch.
Again, you’re looking at a live view of the Delta IV Heavy rocket and behind is the
mobile service tower that Mic was talking about, that they rolled back earlier.
Can you tell us a little bit about the MST roll?
Woltman: Yes, the MST roll went very smoothly.
As I said earlier, they had a few issues with some ground support equipment they got started.
But once they got that fixed and moved, the MST was jacked up and began rolling back.
As it moved back behind the Delta IV vehicle and exposing it to the Sun, it was a beautiful
view.
The MST continued to roll about 400 feet to the north of the pad, where it got into its
park position for launch this evening.
And once that was accomplished, the Delta IV vehicle was out there in plain sight for
everybody, as we can see here this evening.
Finch: And back to a live shot of the Delta IV Heavy rocket.
Mic and I will continue to monitor the countdown from the mission director center.
So with the weather favorable and us looking at the new T-0 at 3:53, we’ll go back to
Marie.