[img]http://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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[img]http://www.ilslaunch.com/assets/Images/Media/ASTRA-1M-Blog/2-The-Eagle-blog.jpg[/img] The ASTRA 1M satellite has landed in Baikonur! The fifth ILS launch campaign of 2008 is officially under way. The ASTRA 1M spacecraft arrived at the Yubileiny Airport at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, the morning of 27 September. The spacecraft and all the equipment needed for ground operations to prepare the spacecraft for launch was carried by an Antonov 124 Russian cargo plane operated by a Russian carrier, Polet. As always it an amazing sight because the Antonov is the largest cargo airplane in production today. And if you think that gas prices have affected you… can you imagine what the one-way fuel bill was for this trip from Toulouse, France, to Baikonur? The Yubileiny airport version of the “Welcome Wagon” flew in along with the aircraft and stayed to supervise the off-loading of the SC. The “Welcome Wagon,” or commonly referred to as a Steppe Eagle, is indigenous to Kazakhstan, which has the largest population of eagles and falcons in Asia. We asked him to stay for the ILS Team photo but he had another plane to catch. Anyway, after the plane cleared customs the team snapped into action to open and remove the support equipment and SC container from the airplane. In just about five hours, we had all the equipment offloaded and secured to the train that transported the SC to the processing facility. The SC, in its container, made its way on the train from the airport to the processing facility, referred to as 92A-50. The main room of this building, known as Hall 101, is absolutely huge – more than large enough to accommodate all the train cars containing the SC and support equipment with room to spare for a soccer game if so inclined! The SC container was offloaded, placed on the floor of the hall, and this is where it spent the night. More adventures to come soon…

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