Update on today’s rehearsal from Santa Maria station

ESA’s Gerhard Billig, the lead engineer overseeing launcher tracking on behalf of the ESTRACK team at ESOC, sent in some photos and an update from ESA’s 5.5m tracking station on Santa Maria island in the Azores a couple hours ago.

Gerhard writes: ESA’s 5.5m Santa Maria station and 15m Perth, Australia, station are taking part in today’s dress rehearsal – both are part of the launcher down-range network for Ariane-5/ATV-2. Today’s rehearsal covers the entire launch countdown including all sequences on the launcher side and on the payload side. Today’s practice will be executed following the same procedures as on launch day.

Here are some pictures of the antenna at Santa Maria – today we are lucky with the weather; yesterday there was an incredible rain storm the whole day! A couple pictures include the team here: Ricardo Conde, Rui Pimentel, Sergio Soares, Ricardo Mourao and myself. Cheers – Gerhard