[img]https://www.ilslaunch.com/assets/Images/Media/ASTRA-1M-Blog/The-cake-blog-a1.jpg[/img] The morning of October 7th started out like any other day here in Baikonur, until we had a visitor at the Fili Hotel. A local owl flew in to tell us that a little birdie told him…Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was sharing his birthday today with our own Joelle! We have always known she was special! So, let us all eat cake…or as the French say, “quel chouette anniversaire!” For the rest of the day, the teams continued with all the stand-alone electrical testing and are on track for SC propellant loading on Thursday. The loading of the propellant is a critical step, in that it allows the load of highly hazardous chemicals into the tanks on board the SC. Everyone is currently preparing for the propellant loading meeting where we will review the readiness of all systems, organizations, processes and procedures for loading SC propellant.

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Upon arrival, the SC container was opened, offloaded, placed on the floor of the hall, and all the associated equipment was placed in the areas to support the unpacking and testing of the SC. The SC was then moved into its temporary new home. Since then Astrium has been busy testing the Astra 1M SC in what is known as stand-alone operations. This is the time in the beginning of the launch campaign when the SC contractors work alone to test and verify that the SC is “healthy.” When all the configuration steps are completed and the SC is completely ready to go, we start “joint operations,” where the SC is integrated with the Proton LV. Right now, they are in the process of testing and verifying that the SC is completely healthy before we proceed to the next step, which will be to load propellants into the tanks inside the SC. In parallel, the SC propellant loading team has been busy with all their checkouts and preparations. Everything is proceeding per the plan which was prepared by SES, Astrium, ILS and KhSC.

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