Welcome back.
Thank you, thank you for staying with us, thank you for coming back
to see this next part of the deployment of the satellites.
Thank you. Thank you for being with us again, and for joining us for the rest.
So Magda, go ahead. Yes, OK. So the three space crafts have been traveling
to their deployment location.
They’re right now installed on a special dispenser that’s going to open up a little bit like a flower
in order for the satellites to separate a little bit before they’re released into their proper orbit.
So a pretty special mechanism was set up.
The three satellites are on a special support device holding them up.
It will tilt very slightly like a flower opening to prevent the satellites from crashing
into each other during ejection.
After about an hour we should be making contact with the first satellite
and then each of the satellites when they reach their orbit they’re going
to deploy their antenna and their solar rays and get into position.
That should take probably about five days for all three of them to complete positioning
and deployment. So an hour after deployment, we should be able to make contact
with the first satellite. Beyond that, there are all the steps for launching into orbit,
opening the solar array and radar antenna—so all that should normally take place within the
next five days, and then… We anticipate that commissioning of the satellites
is going to take about three to six months.
As you can see this is the first step in many steps for the RCM
team before we’re really able to get the data and start using the data on a regular daily basis.
Ah, here we go.
Time to dance?
Are you having fun with us so far?
Okay What you are seeing on screen now are two satellites.
You can see the solar array on one side, you see the two—
although we are just able to see the ejection and deployment.
There. The flower has opened.
We will be able to see the first two, but not the third—anyway, two out of three because
with way the camera is positioned, we can’t see the third.
We’ll be able to see two of the three satellites just because of the positioning of the camera.
That little bit of movement there was the opening of the special dispenser.
Right now we’re less than a minute away from the deployment of the RADARSAT satellites.
Just in case you’re tuning in on our mission this morning we had on time lift-off
from Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning at 7:17 a.m.
Pacific time followed by gorgeous shots of Falcon 9 rising from the fog.
We managed to land the first stage back at landing zone one again
at Vandenberg Air Force Base so hopefully those of you in the Vandenberg
area got to experience that sonic boom.
As you can see on your screen right now second stage is about to deploy
the three RADARSAT satellites on our mission today.
Acquisition signal Melindy.
The view you see right now is at the top of the second stage looking out into two
of the three RADARSAT satellites and on the right hand side of course is the sun which is
giving us some cool solar flare. There on your screen you can see visual confirmation
of the first of three pay load deployments.
We are not launching these one, two, three in rapid succession.
They are spaced out a little bit by a few minutes each.
While our customer is MDA all three of these satellites are for the Canadian Space Agency
to help enhance maritime surveillance, disaster management and environmental monitoring.
Maritime surveillance includes ship detection, ice monitoring, oil pollution monitoring
and marine wind measurement.
Disaster management includes disaster mitigation, warning, response and recovery.
Environmental monitoring includes forestry, protected areas and wildlife habitat,
agriculture, wetlands and coastal change.
The next deployment will be coming up at T plus 58 minutes and 23 seconds so we’re just a
little over two minutes from that. Sit tight and we’ll bring that to you in just a few.
So in about 20 seconds we will have the second of three payload deployments.
Again we have three RADARSAT satellites on board for today’s mission.
We have already successfully deployed the first one a couple of minutes ago
and we’re now awaiting to deploy the second.
Payload two deploy.
There on your screen you can see that we have successfully deployed the second
of three of the RADARSAT satellites.
As I mentioned earlier today’s payloads will be delivered to sun synchronous orbit.
Sun synchronous orbits travel over the earth’s poles as the planet rotates underneath
and that allows the satellites to pass over a particular section
of earth at the same time each day.
Our final deployment is coming up at the 1 hour and 2 minute mark and 13 seconds
so stay tuned and we’ll be back in a few minutes to bring you that.
(Off microphone) Melindy is continuing to (off microphone) but no view is expected.
(Off microphone) today and onwards, as we said earlier, is the launch into orbit
with all of the steps, and of course the first important image will arrive in the coming days
or weeks. Please follow us on social media,
follow what’s happening with RCM with the first images being released hopefully
in the first couple of weeks and see what’s happening with the project
as it goes forward.
We have one more minute to go. One minute. One minute. Woohoo.
The excitement is – Cool. We have fans (unintelligible), that’s good.
Only a few seconds remain, but just for preparing all this today,
I want to thank the team—our communications team, who worked very hard
to make this possible today, and the entire support team,
who made it possible for us to get together and see this.
So give those people a round of applause.
Thank you for the communications department that has made this possible today this day,
this event.
I don’t know if we can see the third one. (Off microphone) our broadcast to a close for today.
On time lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning,
rising out of the fog for a beautiful lift off as well as landing and as I just mentioned
we were able to successfully deploy all three of the RADARSAT Constellation satellites.
We would like to thank the US Air Force for range support and the FAA for licensing today’s launch.
We’d also like to thank all our viewers for tuning in.
Follow our website and social media platforms for updates on our next missions and milestones.
Until next time, have a great day.