This is a little earlier this morning from ESA’s ESTRACK station engineer Robert Launer in Perth; Perth station made headlines back in January when it successfully picked up signals from Russian’s ill-fated Mars mission, Phobos-Grunt.

ESA team at Perth station, Australia Credit: ESA/R. Launer

ESA ESTRACK and local operations team at Perth station, Australia Credit: ESA/R. Launer

Wake up time at 00:30 local – horrible time! Doesn’t matter; Perth station is staffed since 02:00 local. We are prepared to be onsite for the next 14 hours!

All the station pre-checks are completed; the end-to-end communication and network tests with the launcher control centre in Kourou and the entire launcher station network started activity at at H0 (planned lift-off time) – 7h30min (22.03 10:04CET).

— Robert