George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: This is Pegasus Launch Control.
We're now
18 minutes, 39 seconds into the flight of the CYGNSS mission which has launched
aboard a Pegasus XL rocket.
And we're being joined now by Tim Dunn, who is our
NASA launch director for this Pegasus flight this morning.
Tim, first of all, give us a quick summary about how the vehicle performed flight once
we
deployed.
How did it look to you?
Tim Dunn, NASA launch director: It looked beautiful George.
We're very excited.
You
can probably sense a little of the excitement over our shoulders here in the launch
directors center.
Excellent.
Excellent performance by the team.
It's a great event when you have successful spacecraft separation and when you got
microsatellites you get to multiply that by eight.
So that's a lot of fun.
For Pegasus, it was, overall it was a beautiful day.
Gorgeous
weather.
Perfectly smooth with countdown.
The Pegasus launch vehicle had no issues
in preparing it this morning out on the Skid Strip at the Cape.
Spacecraft CYGNSS, excuse me, the CYGNSS spacecraft had no problems in the prep
for those either.
L-1011 getting all of the activities, prelaunch, engine start activity, we're pleased that
all
went really well.
On the range side, Eastern Range phenomenal job by the Air Force as usual.
With all of
their area support that they provide to us to enable us to launch.
To stage out of the
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip and then to launch off the coast in the
Eastern Range area.
So, beautiful weather.
Thank our launch weather officer.
We had some challenges flying
around a lot of precip and dealing with the fog on the runway a couple of morning's ago.
None of that present today.
So hopefully everyone got to see some beautiful shots from
our chase plane.
That was gorgeous.
We had a nominal "hit the box" on time.
And dropped the Pegasus from the belly of the
L-1011.
Then had a nominal flight out.
All three stages performed beautifully.
No issues
at all with Pegasus launch vehicle performance.
And then spacecraft separation with all
of the eight paired spacecraft went right on time.
George Diller, NASA Launch Commentator: Sounds like we had good data from our
partners in South America that were tracking this for us.
Tim Dunn: Absolutely.
We actually had two teams in South America.
We had some
redundancy, but our friends from CNES, European Space Agency, linked in there at
French Guiana, they aided us in acquiring that telemetry.
In addition, we had Wallops, a
NASA center here off the Virginia coast, deployed all the way down to French Guiana,
and set up at the airport.
We got perfect data from both sites.
So I'd like to thank them
for their support.
George Diller: Data continuity all the way through.
Tim Dunn: Absolutely.
George: Well, we're not finished with Pegasus by a longshot.
There is another flight
coming up next year.
Is that right?
Tim Dunn: Yes.
As a matter of fact, our next mission on Pegasus will be the IKON
mission.
And that will stage out of, will process at Vandenberg Air Force Base (in
California).
But we'll do a ferry flight down to the Pacific Ocean to the Kwajalein Atoll
and launch out of Kwaj.
So that is scheduled for mid-June of 2017.
George: Well Tim, thank you very much.
And congratulations.
And we'll be talking again
before then I'm sure.
But definitely from Kwajalein.
So thanks very much.
Tim: You're welcome George.
George: Tim Dunn, our NASA launch director for the CYGNSS Orbital ATK Pegasus
flight today.
Standby, we have some more interviews coming up with some of our spacecraft
personnel to tell us how the deployments are looking.
And hopefully our principal
investigator may have some comments as well.
That will be coming up here we hope in
the next few minutes.
So we're no 22 minutes, 45 seconds into the CYGNSS mission.
This is Pegasus Launch
Control.