markf%Nosc@usiiden.UUCP (06/22/85)
From: <crash!usiiden!markf@Nosc> Change of Shift Press Conference 6/20 -> Let me bring youup to date on the status of the three satellites. TheMorelos is in geosynch and they plan to start testing fromthe station tonight. The Arab Sat, the second had asuccessful apogee kick motor firing. In fact, it wasperformed so well that the latest data I have is that twomore burns are scheduled, but it looks like right now thatthey'll only need one more. And that's presently scheduledfor Saturday morning at 5 AM CDT. The full array deploymentschedul e d for Saturday at 11 AM. The Telstar had an apogeekick motor firing today and it was successful. And theearly testing of Telestar will start on Saturday. I'll getinto detail on Spartan just a little bit later. I feel likeI've kind of slighted the Orbitter , Discovery, the last fewdays and probably shouldn't have because there's beennothing to report on Discovery. Which I think should besaid. It credits a lot of folks especially those at KFCthat turn the vehicle around. And its been just performingabsolutel y outstanding. And there is nothing to report onDiscovery today. The Spartan deployment today was the bigactivity. The deployment went absolutely by the book frommy standpoint. For example, there were absolutely no tipoff rates, the orbitter did not fire a single attitudecontrol jet at the time we deployed the Spartan. We wereprecisely in the atitude desired. We predicted that wewould use someone for the whole operation, leading up tothe deployment exercise, we predicted that we would use atotal of 135 lbs of propellant and we used 129. And I thinkone thing that is a real key here is that in all oursimulations today for the Spartan deployment, the folksthat put that thing together, they predicted throughsimulations that we would be at 950 ft at the beginnin g ofthe second burn, that was the prediction through simulationand we were precisely at 950 ft. And that's a vote ofconfidence for twenty people and all those people who putthat together. Just to remind you, we do not have anytelemetry on Spartan, its an e xperiment that will take alook at two primary sources of X-rays in the heavens, oneat the center of our own gallaxy and in addition it will belooking at an X-ray source from a cluster of stars nearPerseus (I think it is). So we have no telemetry on it,aft er deployment, it let us know that it was O.K. by doinga perouette maneuver, its a simple 45 degree roll about thegrapple fixture and then a return and this indicates to usthat Spartan is alive and we ll and from that point in timeit has an on-board program, an attitude control system togo away and pick up some guide stars to be sure that it isin the right attitude and then further do its sciencetaking. With a summary of tommorrow's activities, we have rescheduled a new primary event for the high precisiontracking experiment (HPTE) over at Mauii and that will bescheduled to occur on orbit 54 which is very close tomission elapsed time of four days even and this equates tosomewhere in the neighborhood of 6 :30 AM. In order to thatwe're moving some of the water test a little further up intime to give us time for the tracking test. And we do havealso planned tommorrow, some mid deck t.v. activities, andat this stage, I'm not too sure of the status of the VIPp hone calls that might occur tommorrow. Oh and by the way,were going to give the Orbit 1 team a chance to do the HPTEtracking. Questions -> Video News Arabia -> Could youplease brief us about the Princes activities for today. Hewas again the subject in the French experiment. But I don'tknow when he does that because it's strictly up to him. I'mafraid I can't answer your question. He will be making areport today. Voice of America -> I understand thatyesterday the astronauts determined among themselves whowas the official 100 th astronaut in space did they giveany indication of how they made the determination? Yes, Itsquite simply a matter that Steve Nagel was the 100 thShannon was runner up, she was 99 th. I believe theydetermined that Steve was something li k e 3 inches behind,further aft then Shannon which made him the 100 th. CNN ->Do you have the ft converted into nautical mi for the Orbit1 team? Yes! Are we going to get a call from Reagan(tommorrow)? None planned at this point. crash!usiiden!markf!nosc