38 days until launch.
WIRE is at the launch site. It was loaded on the truck Friday, January 15th. Yesterday morning, Monday, January 18th, the truck arrived at the Astrotech facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base. By the end of the day, we had the spacecraft and ground support equipment set up and operating. We successfully powered the spacecraft and acquired telemetry. Today we will test the attitude control sensors and actuators.
The first photo shows WIRE in the Astrotech Payload Processing Facility (PPF) with the Pegasus rocket visible on the other side of a contamination barrier. In the third photo, Gary Cooper installs arming connectors for the solar array deployment. The fourth photo shows the view of the cleanroom from the control room where the spacecraft ground support equipment (GSE) resides. The cryostat GSE dominates the view.
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
August 13, 1998 Launch delay
November 23, 1998 New launch date