Once the Pegasus is under
the L-1011, the crew makes sure the two are perfectly aligned before
securing them with hooks and steel pins. There is a launch-site
support trailer behind the L-1011 on the left side of the photo,
where final launch preparations and testing will be performed. Photo
by David Gathright. The final
Launch Readiness Review is scheduled for the day before launch,
Friday. At this review engineers and administrators will for the
last time review all aspects of the launch and determine if the
mission is ready to proceed. The approach is a much more global
picture of the mission, since many of the past reviews have cover
the preliminary details to get them to this point. Some of the
topics that will be covered include range staffing, safety requirements,
communication and radar needs in place, ground operations, weather
forecasts, the overall state of the L-1011, the Pegasus, the spacecraft
and the payload.
NASA will be hosting a SORCE Press Conference at KSC on Friday,
January 24, at 1:00 p.m. EST, 11:00 a.m. MST. Gary Rottman and
Tom Sparn, along with NASA officials, will be presenting and fielding
questions from the |
press. This
Press Conference will be televised by NASA and is available for
viewing via satellite or the internet. It will last no more than
one hour.
For people working at the LASP facility in Boulder, the Press
Conference on Friday will be shown in the LASP Auditorium, room
299, beginning at 11:00 a.m. For those interested in viewing the
Press Conference via the internet, NASA TV is serviced by several
World Wide Web sources. To find out what internet companies are
covering NASA TV, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv, where there
is a listing of the web sources. Generally, the best web source
for viewing NASA TV is NASA Spaceflight Web, since they use Windows
Media Player, which is installed on most Windows-based PCs (free
of charge). The website is at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/nasatv/index.html.
The SORCE website is also an excellent source for the information
you need – http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce. 
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