Diary from a space project – 20 March 2012, Tuesday (L-3!)

This report sent in earlier today by Charlotte in Toulouse. Happy exclamation marks all original 🙂 – Ed.

  • D–5 Fairing back on ATV-3 — March 13: Done!!
  • D-4 Count-down dress rehearsal — March 16: Done!!!
    Main Inspection Point for Project team –> ATV3 ready for launch: Done!!
  • D-3 ESA formal Launch Readiness Review (LRR) — March 19: Done!!
  • D-2 Arianespace RAL (Revue Aptitude Lancement) — March 20
  • D-2/1 Weather briefings from Arianespace
  • D-1 Data transfer (final data sent from ATV-CC sent to Amaldi‘s computers) and start of countdown — March 22
  • D0 Launch — March 23 (very early – 04:31 GMT/05:31 CET)
  • D+5 Docking to the ISS — March 28 (late evening)

And then… just to be complete: ATV-4 L-< 1 year!!

  • Meeting with Astrium & ESA to give ‘go ahead’ for ATV-4 spacecraft stand-alone functional test — March 14: Done
  • Kick-off for the preliminary mission analysis (RAMP) with Arianespace — March 21!!!
Flight dynamics team in ATV-CC Credit: ©CNES/Frédéric Maligne, 2012

Flight dynamics team in ATV-CC Credit: ©CNES/Frédéric Maligne, 2012

I am here (ATV-CC) on behalf of ESA’s Engineering Support Team (EST) and we are doing the final preparations for launch and the mission.

Yesterday, Monday, we went through the various open points/issues on the equipment and software tools that we use. Nothing is blocking for flight!

The tools we have at our disposal allow us to connect with experts at ESTEC, ESA’s technical centre in The Netherlands; the Astrium work site at les Mureaux, in France; and, in Toulouse by telephone for discussion — and all of us can access the central file repository located in Germany, not bad!!!

In parallel, we can contact various functional experts via email and get replies fairly fast. The biggest difficulty is actually to free up a slot in our agendas to conduct the ‘telcons’. Once we are connected, we make swift progress.

Today, we did the same operation but with CNES in the loop. Some of the EST issues relate to the CNES infrastructure here at ATV-CC (which CNES operates on behalf of ESA – Ed.). Naturally each side has their own database and their own tracking system (as well as their own priorities) but we made speedy progress today as well.

We launch on Friday (if all goes according to the current plan) but we have a 6-month mission and ATV-4 is following close on ATV-3’s heels so we must take a long-term view. The trade-off is always between work-arounds that can be applied at once, and solutions that can be applied later.

And, as if we did not have enough to plan for, the CNES canteen staff went on strike yesterday and today, so no lunch!

Apart from that, we are definitely ready for the mission! Tomorrow the rest of the EST arrives and we have the final briefing with our ESA/CNES flight control counterparts. Then on Thursday evening the countdown begins for a launch in the early hours of Friday morning.

The next time we then start thinking about non-ATV stuff will be the end of March — after docking!!!

That’s it for now..

— Charlotte