December 18, 2002

The SORCE spacecraft has been in a hold mode since Thanksgiving, awaiting arrival of the Pegasus launch vehicle from assembly facilities in California. The delivery of the launch vehicle has been delayed due to a wing bond problem and reliability concerns with onboard actuators. These issues have been successfully cleared and the launch vehicle arrived at KSC aboard the L1011 OCA (Orbital Carrier Aircraft) December 17th (see attached pictures). The launch vehicle is currently in the process of being detached from the OCA and transported to the MPPF (Multi-Payload Processing Facility). This activity is expected to be completed by end-of-day December 18th. The additional photo is a shot of the LSST (Launch Site Support Trailer) where all of the final pre-launch “Hot Pad” activities will be run from. The primary “Hot Pad” activity associated with the LSST is a launch minus 8 hour sequence of events that includes a final turn-on and checkout of spacecraft subsystems.

Recent spacecraft activities have included a new Instrument Module (IM) Microprocessor (MU) SUROM load which was installed during the week of December 9th. The new load was implemented to address some potential concerns that had recently been uncovered by a component manufacturer. The focus this week (December 16th) is on battery conditioning and a 48 hour operations exercise to verify the the integrity of the new SUROM load. There are no activities scheduled for the Christmas week. Pre-launch activities resume December 31st when initial preparations for mating of the spacecraft to the launch vehicle begin. The month of January shows a heavy schedule of tasks in anticipation of a January 25th launch.