WIRE Launch is postponed until March 1999!
The spacecraft was ready, and the rocket was ready, but manifest priorities forced Orbital Sciences Corporation to decide not to launch WIRE this fall. The WIRE launch window closes November 1st, and two other Pegasus launches are scheduled between now and then. The spacecraft team will stay on standby until September 11th, the last possible ship date which would still support a fall launch, in case one of the missions drops out of the manifest.
The WIRE team ran another launch-through-cover-deploy simulation August 4- 6. The flight operations team (FOT) and science operations team stepped through the first three days of the mission pass by pass as if the spacecraft were in orbit. We used the dynamic simulator to simulate the attitude control sensors and injected data into the instrument using the focal plane simulator. The FOT and science team have sharpened their skills and are ready for launch. We will conduct several more simulations during the standdown.
On August 7th, we removed the ACE box to update the software. The software is contained in a PROM which we replaced. The ACE safehold code was not properly calculating rate-damping torques--it was off by a factor of 2. We replaced the PROM and retested the box over the weekend. This week, we repeated ACS comprehensive testing. The spacecraft is ready to go.
Previous updates:
August 18, 1997 Structure and Cryostat progress
October 20, 1997 Structure qual and harness
installation
October 31, 1997 First powerup
November 7, 1997 Transponder integration, power
long functional
November 14, 1997 WIE and pyro
box integration
November 21, 1997 RF and ACS
integration
December 5, 1997 ACS testing
December 23, 1997 Work under spacecraft
January 9, 1998 ACS testing, gyro phasing
January 16, 1998 Instrument thermal simulator
January 23, 1998 Wire tracker
January 30, 1998 Build up solar array
February 6, 1998 Ops testing, remove transponder
February 20, 1998 Move to Building 7
March 12, 1998 Cleaning and Solar Array Testing
March 23, 1998 Prep for Environmental and into EMI
April 3, 1998 EMI and Vibration
April 20, 1998 Vibration and Shock
April 25, 1998 Thermal Balance
May 29, 1998 Instrument integration and Thermal
Vacuum
June 3, 1998 Spin Balance
June 17, 1998 Astrotech Tour and Magnetic
Calibration
June 30, 1998 QD qual, fairing fit
check, comprehensive testing
July 29, 1998
Ready to ship, QD testing