Main Team Arrival

The Team’s all here! After a few fits and starts to their day of travel from Moscow to Baikonur (traffic can be most convoluted in Moscow), our weary colleagues finally arrived at Area 95 to enthusiastic greetings from their fellow mission team members.   After a prompt check-in and swiftly dropping off bags in their hotel rooms, team members sat down to share a meal together, some catching up with friends from previous missions of years gone by and others being introduced for the first time.  No matter what way you look at it, sharing a meal is a wonderful way to bring people together!

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Fitcheck Operation Completed

Starts to campaigns are always a flurry of activity from getting acquainted to the hotels, figuring out the transportation to and from 92A50, overcoming jet-lag due to time zone changes and making sure that we are all on-point for the major milestones that occur soon after our arrival.  Our initial operation is a fitcheck that occurs between the SCM’s SC and KhSC Adapter System before the hardware and teams continue with respective stand-alone operations in Hall 101 and H103A.

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SC Off-Load

Baikonur….we have an E9B SC!  SC arrival is a momentous launch campaign milestone, one that truly gets our launch campaign revved up and into full swing.

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Early Team Arrival

A light dusting of snow blanketed the city of Moscow as the team kicked off our journey to Baikonur for the E9B launch campaign.  Luggage stowed, the team clambered aboard our bus and headed to Vnukovo Airport to catch our charter.

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TURKSAT-4B

The Early Team for the TURKAST-4B launch campaign arrived on Sunday, 30 August, and were greeted by their colleagues from Inmarsat-5 F3 who are putting the finishing touches on packing up to exit the cosmodrome after their successful launch campaign earlier in the week.

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Inmarsat-5 F3 | SC Off-Load

After the Antonov arrived carrying the Inmarsat-5 F3 SC at 10:00 on 1 May, the teams performed a flawless off-load. The SC then took a train ride to the 92A50 processing facility and arrived around 21:00, and was tucked safely away for the night in Hall 101.
The teams were back at it on 2 May performing the fitcheck that went succesfully in preparation to moving the SC into Hall 103A for SC standalone processing.

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Joint Operations Underway

Joint operations are well underway!  The first day of joint operations was 17 April.  All of the teams brought their “A” game, and worked together like a well-oiled machine. A lot of major operations have taken place in the last few days; from transfer of the fueled SC from Hall 103A to Hall 101, SC mating with the payload adapter (PLA), and then mating with the Breeze-M.  From there the (SC+PLA+BM) which is now called an Orbital Unit (OU) goes from vertical to horizontal via the tilter.  The titling of the OU is one of the awe inspiring operations to witness.  Great job by all involved.
Next up on our milestones is Breeze M fueling but before then the teams will encapsulate the OU in the Payload fairing (PLF), transfer the OU via railcar from Hall 101 to Hall 111 and then mate the OU with the rest of the rocket.  All the while both the SC and LV are continually tested to ensure that everything is nominal and falls within the required specifications.

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SC Fueling Completed!

As usual the Boeing Propulsion team and accompanying support crews brought their “A” game for the fueling operations.  With early starts and long days the team has successfully loaded both propellant components into the Centenario SC.  Due to the hazardous nature of the operations, all non-essential personnel were relocated to the hotels and had two days of down time.  Those team members lucky enough to have down time took the opportunity to head to town to do shopping and try out some of the local restaurants. Others remained hard at work from the hotels, conducting daily meetings, producing reports, ensuring launch campaign operations were moving forward and on target. Typically, to celebrate the successful completion of fueling, a good old fashioned American BBQ is held to salute the team for a job well done unfortunately,  Mother Nature had other ideas for the weather so the celebratory bbq will be held later this week.

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For the latest news and information, or if you have a question, please email ILS at contactus@ilslaunch.com