yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee) (10/22/88)
Weekly Payload Status Report
NASA Kennedy Space Center
Tuesday, October 18, 1988
George Diller
TDRS-3
The spacecraft thrusters were scheduled to be fired on
Saturday, Oct. 15, to stop the satellite's drift at 150 degrees
W. longitude, which is east of Christmas Island in the Pacific.
The full checkout of the spacecraft will then begin. The K-band
systems have been activated. Other systems activation and as-
sociated calibration in prepartion for the testing is underway.
The checkout of the spacecraft will be complete on approximately
December 25. At that time the onboard thrusters will once again
be fired to begin the drift of the spacecraft to 171 degrees W.
longitude where it will be permanently stationed over the equator
approximately below American Samoa. There TDRS-3 assumes opera-
tional status and the designation of TDRS-West. The TDRS-3
spacecraft at this time is described as "healthy." No sig-
nificant problems have been identified.
TDRS-D (Discovery OV-103) 2/89
TDRS-D is at the TRW plant in Redondo Beach, California.
Spacecraft component integration and testing will resume next
week. Shipping plans are on schedule for an arrival at KSC on
November 30. The Inertial Upper Stage will arrive on Dec. 10.
MAGELLAN (Atlantis OV-104) 4/89
The Payload Environmental Transportation System (PETS) which
transported Magellan to the Kennedy Space Center on its six-day
trip from Denver arrived at KSC on Saturday, Oct. 8. It was es-
corted to the SAEF-2 planetary spacecraft checkout facility lo-
cated in the KSC Industrial Area. At that time the high gain an-
tenna and ground support equipment were offloaded. The
spacecraft was removed from the PETS trailer on Sunday. The com-
mand and data system has now been installed and checked out. The
power control unit was installed Friday and checkout has been un-
derway.
At about 11:00 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 17, the Magellan
spacecraft experienced a localized electrical fire when workers
were connecting battery cables. The fire was quickly extin-
guished and, at this time, the spacecraft itself appears un-
damaged.
The test battery and the associated wire harness with connector
will have to be replaced. It is presently believed that during
the process of connecting the battery cables to the forward
spacecraft module there was a short circuit. This caused an
overheating of the battery which was followed by smoke and a
small flame. About five to seven days are estimated to be neces-
sary to recover from the incident. There is no impact to the
launch date. An investigation board has been appointed.
The radio transponder used for communication with the ground
that has been under repair at Motorola was received at KSC
today. The replacement at Hughes Aircraft of the X-band transmit-
ter on the spacecraft radar is complete and that unit was also
received today at KSC. These will be integrated with the
spacecraft later, after authorization to proceed is received from
the board investigating the battery incident.