Dawn Mission, pre-launch disscusion Options

[BPCooper]

Hate to be the informer but its NET July 15 now. I have a feeling...

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Jeez, this is turning from bad to rotten, quickly. I wonder if Ed "The Axe" Weiler were still running SMD whether he would be close to saying, "Take it off the pad and ship it to NASM."

[mars loon]

Here is the latest just in on the July 15 launch target from spaceflightnow.com

------

FRIDAY, JULY 6, 2007
2355 GMT (7:55 p.m. EDT)

ANOTHER DELAY. The Dawn asteroid exploration mission won't be launching before Sunday, July 15, NASA officials announced Friday evening after extensive decisions about the availability of downrange tracking assets and the overall readiness to go fly.

The United Launch Alliance Delta 2-Heavy rocket stands fully assembled with Dawn nestled inside the vehicle's nose cone at Cape Canaveral's pad 17B.

But this is the third delay in the past two days for the launch. Stormy weather prevented the Delta 2 rocket's second stage from being fueled on Thursday, forcing the liftoff to be delayed from Saturday to Sunday. NASA decided early Friday morning to slip the launch another 24 hours - to Monday - because of troubles with a telemetry-relay aircraft.

Problems with the tracking plane and delays getting a substitute ship into the Atlantic Ocean region has been a source of headaches for the launch officials. Either the aircraft or the instrumented ship is required to receive telemetry from the rocket during the second and third stage firings off the west-central coast of Africa. Without a mobile tracking asset in place, engineers would have no insight or data while those critical events of the launch occur.

NASA is racing against the calendar because Dawn's current launch opportunity closes July 19, giving just a few days left to get the spacecraft on the required trajectory to fly past Mars for a sling-shot maneuver and then into the asteroid belt for its rendezvous with Vesta and Ceres over the next eight years.

If this period is missed, another one opens in September and extends through late October.

What impact, if any, this latest delay could have to the planned August 3 launch of the Mars lander Phoenix aboard another Delta 2 rocket from the neighboring pad is not immediately clear. The alignment of the planets dictates a tight August 3 to August 24 window for the Phoenix liftoff to happen.

The start of Dawn's mission to examine up close two of the solar system's largest asteroids has been hit by a number of setbacks, including outright cancellation of the project in March 2006. After a heated controversy, NASA restarted the mission less than a month later.

Plans called for the launch to happen June 20, but that date was scrapped because more time was needed to prepare the Delta rocket before on-pad assembly could start. Then a targeted June 30 launch day was doomed when the pad's crane developed a problem last month, causing a hiatus in attaching the solid-fuel boosters.

Launch on July 15 would be possible during a window stretching from 3:22 to 3:54 p.m. EDT.

[Guest_Analyst_*]

Jeez, this is turning from bad to rotten, quickly. I wonder if Ed "The Axe" Weiler were still running SMD whether he would be close to saying, "Take it off the pad and ship it to NASM."

AFAIK all delays from June 20th onwards have nothing to do with the spacecraft itself but with the launch vehicle or support equipment (tracking assets, crane etc.). I repeat myself with saying this isn't only bad luck but also a lack of planning, contincency planning, lack of strategy etc.

Analyst

[djellison]

Anyone who has read and understood Jim's posts can see why the situation is as it is - and given the resources available, no ammount of contingency or planning could have avoided it.

Doug

[Jim from NSF.com]

AFAIK all delays from June 20th onwards have nothing to do with the spacecraft itself but with the launch vehicle or support equipment (tracking assets, crane etc.). I repeat myself with saying this isn't only bad luck but also a lack of planning, contincency planning, lack of strategy etc.

Analyst

Not so. You have no clue what is going on. No amount of planning would have avoided these "things" and allowed Dawn to launch any earlier. The strategy is to launch Dawn ASAP

1. Crane. Crap happens. No amount of planning would avoid this
2. TM airplane upon returning from depot maintenance experiences a delamination of an aileron
3. TM airplane experiences failure in mission equipment
4. TM ship experiences stronger currents than planned
5. weather

A. TM airplane is owned by the Army and supports many users, most with higher priorities
B. The TM equipment is owned by the USAF and the boat is chartered.
C. NASA "contracts" both for assets, but they managed by their owning org, NASA just requests where they are needed and when. How they get their is determined by the owning org.


Let's see you put together a decision matrix to take all this into account. Meanwhile, spacecraft contractor is charging for the delays and ULA is charging for the delays (TM is a NASA requirement).

[nprev]

Yeow. Sounds horribly familiar, Jim, and I agree with you. The only thing in your list that makes me mad is that delaminated aileron; that definitely should have been caught & fixed by the Depot contractor, and I hope NASA/DCMA(?) is raising hell with them about it...pretty shoddy.

Come to that, though, most planes need at least two weeks to shake out problems after coming out of Depot; pity there apparently isn't enough asset depth to permit this to happen & it had to fly a hot mission so soon.

[ugordan]

Crap happens.

I blame everything that's happened on gremlins.

[Jim from NSF.com]

should have been caught & fixed by the Depot contractor, and I hope NASA/DCMA(?) is raising hell with them about it...pretty shoddy.

It is not NASA's plane.

[BPCooper]

It's off till September officially. :-(

[Tom Tamlyn]

Since they didn't fuel the second stage, I gather (based on the press conference) that they will have a longer September window than if they had been forced to find a new second stage. That's a (very) small sliver lining.

TTT

[BPCooper]

I believe the September window (planetary window) opens Sept. 7. I might be wrong though.

[belleraphon1]

All...

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jul/H...stpone_Sep.html

"NASA will hold a news briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, July 9, to preview the launch of the Phoenix Mars Lander. Prior to the Phoenix presentations, media will have the opportunity to learn in more detail about the rescheduled Dawn launch.[i][u] The briefing will originate from the NASA Headquarters auditorium, 300 E St., S.W., Washington. It will air live on NASA Television and be streamed online at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv"

Craig

[BPCooper]

SFN story:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d325/070707delay.html

[nprev]

(sigh)...