It is Friday morning and L-5 days to launch. After two relatively quiet days of Integrated Launch Vehicle (ILV) checks, it is time to move it to the Breeze M fueling station. This is day one of two days of one of the more hazardous operations that will take place during a launch campaign. The ILV is positioned on a specially designed rail car – it needs to support the entire length and mass of a fully integrated Proton M launch vehicle! With the ILV ready to roll, the troops gathered outside of Hall 111 in anticipation of the transport.  It’s breathtaking to watch the horizontal ILV roll slowly out of the building. The only thing that could bring on more goosebumps would have been Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” playing on loudspeakers as it came out! The unit is towed out, and then backed up into the Breeze M fueling station, which looks like a huge carport. This is its home for two days as the Breeze M multi-burn main engine takes on fuel. All fueling operations are completely controlled by Khrunichev specialists.  Because of the nature of the fueling operations, Building 92A-50 is cleared of all nonessential personnel. With a couple of days off – or at least away from the office – for most of the team, it is time for another barbecue! Even though it has cooled off significantly since our first barbeque, everyone is ready to gather around the grills for some freshly grilled meat and camaraderie. Add in the beans, potatoes and dessert and you have got a perfect Friday afternoon in Baikonur.

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/Fully-Assembled.JPG[/img] The signing festivities are complete and it is once again time to get down to business. With the rail transporter in place in Hall 101, the Ascent Unit (AU) is lifted from the tilter and positioned over the train. As team members gather to watch, the slow and rather brief train ride gets underway. The train pulls out of Hall 101 and moves down the rails, then a switch is moved so the train can back up and move towards the entrance to Hall 111. This is the hall which houses the complete Proton M/Breeze M rocket that will take the Ciel II satellite into orbit. Hall 111 is huge. Hall 101 was earlier described as being able to hold a soccer match. Hall 111 can hold the grandstands as well. As the AU enters the room, we can only marvel at what is seen: the complete launch vehicle (LV), laying horizontal in its support stand. Pictures do not do justice to the impressive sight of the LV in this room. The AU is lifted from the transporter and is placed on a holding dolly. Very little time was wasted before the AU was mated to the launch vehicle (LV). With the AU on its rail dolly, Khrunichev specialists hand cranked the unit and aligned it with the LV. It is finally one complete unit, known as the integrated Launch Vehicle (ILV).  While Khrunichev puts the ILV through two days of electrical checks, thermal shielding installations and readiness checks in preparation for the move to the Breeze M fueling station, the ThalesAlenia Space (TAS) team performs their own pre-transport checks side-by-side with Khrunichev in Hall 111. As you can most likely tell by the pictures, there’s plenty of room in that huge hall for everyone to work in unison.  Needless to say, the excitement is building as everyone sees the finished product and wraps up preparations for its final leg of a long journey: To the Breeze M fueling station and then off to Launch Complex 39. To celebrate the successful transportation of the AU to Hall 111, the Pinkertons hosted burrito night at the Polyot. We hire these guys and gals to do security? They could open the best Tex-Mex restaurant this side of the Rio Grande – or at least this side of the Aral Sea!

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/Mated.JPG[/img] Yahoo! Stand-alone testing is complete.  We have started the next phase known as Joint Operations.  This is when the SC is mechanically and electrically mated to the Launch Vehicle hardware.  To put it simply, this is when we start making the little pieces into one big piece! Joint Operations involves a lot of hard yards (man hours) being put in by a plethora of people.  The first step was to mate the SC to the adapter system – a conical structure that attaches to the bottom of the SC. Next, the SC-adapter combo was mated to the Breeze M upper stage. We successfully completed these steps today after about 18 hours of work, taking into account all the testing and mechanical and electrical checks that had to occur.  Today at 1600 hours, the SC-adapter-Breeze M stack will be rotated from vertical to horizontal and encapsulated in the payload fairing. The combination of all these pieces into a single unit is known as the Ascent Unit (AU). The SC will remain in a horizontal orientation until we move the whole launch vehicle to launch pad four days before launch. The first order of business and required for encapsulation is the need to have the SC in a horizontal position. This is one of the more jaw-dropping operations to witness. The newly mated Breeze M engine, PLA and satellite fully loaded with propellant are mounted to a turnover fixture (aka the tilter). That is a whole lot of inches and a whole lot of pounds, supported only by the clampband (a thin metal ring that joins the SC to the PLA).  The entire structure is rotated from vertical to horizontal in order to install the payload fairing.  It can be quite nerve-wracking during these 30 minutes. However, the method once again proved to be successful. The Breeze M, the payload adapter and the flight hardware moved to horizontal just as they were designed. It really is a spectacular sight to see.

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/SES-Chefs.JPG[/img] SES Engineering and ILS hosted a Thanksgiving feast fit for kings and launch campaign personnel.  The cooking started the previous afternoon and continued into our Thanksgiving Day since there was not enough space to cook all of the birds.  Everyone used the half-day break before joint operations to enjoy the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and quintessential cranberry sauce.  (No Thanksgiving is complete without it!) The mouth-watering feast was prepared by our in-house SES Engineering chefs.   In addition to launching satellites, our customer (launch program manager and engineers) could give the best chefs around the globe a run for their money! All of us are away from our loved ones on this special day.  Even with land and oceans separating us from our families, the unity of our Baikonur family made the day more poignant! After our early dinner, we piled into the bus and vans to head out to the viewing area for the Soyuz launch.  We joined what seemed like half of Baikonur town to watch what turned out to be a spectacular launch, with the engine plumes catching the setting sun and blazing red, orange and blue. We concluded our day with … you guessed it: a late supper of copacetic turkey sandwiches then headed off to bed to prepare for an early morning start to joint operations.

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/Whered-SC-Go.JPG[/img] This is a time of many goodbyes.  The mid-campaign exit charter left with more than half of our French colleagues and one of the customer representatives.  It is also time to say goodbye to the spacecraft (SC), visually anyway, as the payload fairing is ready to be installed. With the SC horizontal and hovering above a rail track, the bottom half of the fairing is situated on a rail car below. It sits in a cradle and is hand cranked in to position under the SC. Once that is in place, the upper half of the fairing is hoisted up by crane and positioned above the prone SC and lowered to mate with the bottom half. Under the watchful ThalesAlenia Space (TAS) team’s supervision, the maneuvers were successful and the Ciel II SC was officially encapsulated in preparation for its ride into orbit. This newly assembled configuration is now called the ascent unit (AU). Once the two halves are secured, the team spends two days performing electrical tests and verifying communications with the encapsulated SC. The term “team” certainly applies in this case, as a veritable plethora of activities are ongoing while the TAS specialists and the Khrunichev teams work together performing pre-launch testing. It is impressive to behold the satellite hovering in a horizontal position, and seeing the whole AU cantilevered off of the tilter stand is even more impressive. Time now to mate the AU to the Proton launch vehicle! The fun continues… One of the more technical operations that is performed is the signing of the payload fairing by the entire launch team. It takes a lot of coordination with all the parties. The exacting nature of this complex operation is really quite a spectacle, as the team members take turns climbing up the ladder, putting their personal touches on the fairing logos and then climbing back down the ladder.  The critical decisions include: what to write and who to dedicate the launch to: parents, children and loved ones of all sorts are named on the fairing as a tribute to them from the launch team members.  It’s a great photo opportunity for the team. It is also the last thing we do prior to mating the AU to the launch vehicle. It has been a long road for the SC contractors and their satellite, and it is at this point that they hand it over to the capable hands of our Russian partners from Khrunichev.

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/bbq.jpg[/img] Spacecraft fueling is complete!  It was a long weekend for the propulsion teams with the spacecraft now on-board. Tanks were successfully loaded with oxidizer and fuel.  Since this is a hazardous operation, all non-essential personnel were required to stay out of 92A-50.  So we used that as a good reason to hold the first barbeque of the campaign.  The weather was great, our customer and other grillmeisters manned the grills and kitchens, and everyone put on their coats to enjoy the burgers, brats, chicken, potato salad, baked beans and… but we will not bore you with a list of all of the delectable dishes that we enjoyed – check out the pictures!  We are now getting ready for our next big feast: Thanksgiving. We are celebrating a day early, since joint operations start on Thursday and we have some very busy days ahead. Also included in our Thanksgiving festivities is a trip to see the launch of a Progress mission to the International Space Station!

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Our Thales/KhSC specialists have arrived! Yesterday the long-awaited URALAir flight finally touched down at Krayny (after an hour delay due to fog – in Moscow!) and offloaded the key personnel needed to keep our launch campaign schedule on track. Today, along with warm, balmy weather and scintillating views of the horizon and sun, we continue standalone operations and prepare for propellant loading. During propellant loading all non-essential personnel will have downtime to continue exploring Baikonur town, rock out while playing Rock Band, or just be plain ol’ lollygaggers if they so choose. Additionally, our customer is going to don their BBQ Chef hats and kick off the first BBQ of the Ceil II campaign. Fog, cold, snow or shine – any weather is BBQ weather! Photos to follow next week (proof that we are staunch BBQ enthusiasts).

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/Where-did-Launch-Pad-Go.jpg[/img] Grounded! Due to the ever-persistent fog, sent to us by an ornery Mother Nature, some of our team members have been grounded in Baikonur until Krayny is reopened and the commercial URALAir flight comes in from Moscow. Standalone operations continue as we march forward towards joint operations, which start on Thanksgiving Day — we will have much to be thankful about.

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[img]/assets/Images/Media/Ciel-2-Blog/Make-A-Wish.JPG[/img] Dense fog has crept in on its little cat feet for the last several days and, since the temperature has been inching towards zero, we were greeted for lunch with all of the trees and bushes covered with a layer of hoar frost; the decorative harbinger of winter and snow. In keeping with the axiom about “all work and no play,” it was decided that we were overdue for a little bit of play. With standalone testing successfully underway, most of the teams spent the day meandering around Baikonur town, taking in the local cuisine and finding bargains at the market. (Getting Christmas shopping done – for once before 24 December!) We also took advantage of the contingency day to gather the troops to celebrate not one but four birthdays for the previous week. Being the ubiquitous team that we are, we attended the birthday dinner that Thales put on in honor of the four birthday boys. There was much merriment, toasts and conversation. In keeping with the French birthday tradition, all of the women at the dinner gave each birthday boy an osculatory gift. Our repertoire of international birthday traditions is ever expanding!

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