http://www.contour2002.org/news.php?id=9
CONTOUR Update July 2, 2002 Start the Countdown! >From a final fill up to a half-day's worth of system checkouts, CONTOUR's last day on the ground includes a range of planned activity on the launchpad and the spacecraft. Fueling of the Delta II launch vehicle's first stage is scheduled to start today at 6:30 p.m. EDT. The tower on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Pad 17A, weather permitting, would be rolled back before 10 p.m. Meanwhile, the spacecraft team plans to "power up" CONTOUR at 3 p.m. - about 12 hours before liftoff - and once powered the craft will run a computerized script that configures it for launch. Engineers will monitor each of CONTOUR'ssubsystems until about seven minutes before launch; then the spacecraft switches from an external power source to its own battery. "Just before launch we turn off the telemetry systems and give the word that the spacecraft is ready to go," says Ed Reynolds, CONTOUR's deputy project manager and mission systems engineer from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and will operate CONTOUR. Liftoff is scheduled for 2:47:41 a.m. EDT on July 3; forecasters for the 45th Space Wingat Cape Canaveral Air Force Station estimate a 70 percent chance of favorable launch weather. NASA TV's live CONTOUR launch coverage starts at 1 a.m. and continues until the spacecraft separates from the launch vehicle, scheduled for 4 a.m. Watch it live on the Web at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/ . ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
