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Engines are at one hundred percent attitude. Poor pressures and equal substances are nominal. The ss catherine johnson takes flight on this. The 59th anniversary of john glenn’s mercury flight carrying eight thousand pounds of cargo to the international space station good performance on the first stage so far Applause stage, one continues: nominal performance inches at 100 percent, good good, core pressures. Music engines remain steady attitude, nominal Music, max q attitude, nominal first stage, passing through the area of maximum dynamic pressure on the rocket 90 seconds into the light Music. This first stage burns for a little over three minutes. Three minutes 18 seconds until main engine cut off Music about 90 seconds to stage one burnout attitude nominal engines at 100 and steady t plus two minutes. Music. All subsystems continue in nominal performance. Also, some sub systems are nominal we’ll, be ready to shift down to 80. On the engines at 170., startup slow throttle down throttling down at three minutes into the flight main engine cutoff coming soon throttle down to 55 percent main engine cutoff. We have miko and terry’s entering into a co stage. Fairing separation will occur about 30 seconds later, as we lose side of the vehicle now. Switching to animation, some control, the firings on the inter stage of the rocket attitude nominal good separation, 20 seconds to stage two ignition all subsystems, nominal fairing separation, enter stage. Separation confirm fairing separation and enter stage stage. Two ignition stage: 2 ignition confirmed stage 2 is a solid rocket motor burns for about 2 minutes 44 seconds stage.

Two will continue to burn for another approximately two minutes: altitude: 138 kilometers uh mission time 300 seconds, velocity 4.8 kilometers per second altitude, 150 kilometers. All systems continue to perform nominally good calls 5 minutes 15 seconds into today’s flight h2. Motor pressure, nominal attitude – nominal altitude – is 170 kilometers, roughly one minute to stage two burnout. All stage 2 and gnc parameters continue to be nominal 6 minutes 15 seconds into the flight coming up on stage 2 burnout of that solid rocket motor. That will initiate a two minute coast period until second stage separation stage, two starting to tail off roughly 15 seconds to burn out stage two burnout attitude: nominal stage: two burnout, good attitude, uh we’ll we’re in a coast period now, cygnus did exposed after that uh fairing Separation and will continue to carry the second stage with it until about nine minutes into the flight attitude attitude. Nominal expected attitude, control system, thruster firings received continuing on course, roughly one minute to payload separation, altitude, 185 kilometers velocity 7.5 kilometers per second. All systems continue to operate as expected, approximately 30 seconds to spacecraft separation attitude. Nominal systems continue to perform as expected attitude corrections, maintaining expectations. Lc gso. I just released red team to the pad copy that spacecraft separation confirmed nine minutes into today’s. Flight cygnus has separated from the second stage lc ace. That concludes our callouts copy, that ace okay, uh ng15 excellent job. Today, let’s go ahead and wrap up through this post, launch checklist and prop 1.

Can you report on status of pulse purging, pulse purging has just started copy that we’ll check 4 30. and uh tnc one lc uh when you have uh the antarctic state factor to uh the cygnus poc emailed, confirmed uh. Give me a call back on step 431 copy and work from the wallops range control center in wallops island virginia some celebratory fist bumps as they successfully delivered cygnus into orbit a nine minute flight on top of antares from virginia space’s, mid atlantic regional spaceport uh into Orbit cygnus now flying free, the ss katherine johnson in flight will make its one and a half day journey just a little shy of two days to the international space station arriving in the wee hours early morning on monday february, 22nd harmony rotated arm enable indication, no Longer illuminated copy that option and option disable your local launch enable button ops, one launch enable removed engine flight controllers in dulles, uh virginia northrop grumman’s mission operation center will take control of the cygnus and monitor its approach to the international space station over the next couple Of days, uh solar array, deployment coming in a couple of hours will uh be breaking before that and we’ll provide a confirmation of that, via our blog and social media. Before we depart with you today for our coverage of the launch of northrop grumman’s, crs 15 mission to the international space station we’re, bringing on uh deputy manager of the international space station program, kenny todd on with us to provide some remarks kenny.

Thank you for joining us today, hey gary good good morning, good to be with you kenny. This launch comes ahead of a crew rotation and, of course, in the near term, some evas from the perspective of the international space station program. What is the significance of this mission? Uh crs 15? Well, uh gary. I mean this uh. This particular mission, uh um has um about eight thousand pounds of of cargo coming to the space station and uh. You know roughly a third of it is going to be dedicated uh directly to utilize utilization and science on board on board the station and so again that’s our that’s, our bread and butter that’s that’s. What we’re up there to do is is really really do the utilization and science that that our commercial customers need the things that we need to learn in order to go further into our solar system. Our human research and so we’ve we’ve got a lot of this flight that’s dedicated uh to to that kind of activity. Uh. In addition to that, we’ve uh we’ve got a little over a third of it. That’S dedicated just to basic vehicle systems, maintenance hardware and some new, some new technology that we’re bringing on board so again as we as we look to go further further away from low earth orbit. The thing that we have to do is continue to learn. You know about the systems that we’re going to need and and the iss provides a great platform for that.

So we are launching some some new hardware in the vehicle systems area that allow us to to demonstrate some of this technology and ensure that it’ll be be there for us when we need it in the future. But then, as always, these cygnus flights are very important to us because they bring up a lot of crew supplies as well. They are a workhorse when it comes to to to making sure that we keep our crews sustained on orbit with with the different consumables that they need so again. A very important flight for us and we’re glad to see it off the ground and on the way to station off the ground and on the way to station on time kenny. This is coming right on the heels of texas having some severe winter weather. Now, how were international space station operations uh continuously supported during those rolling blackouts across the state? Well, you know there’s kind of two facets of that gary there’s, the facilities – you know the facilities themselves are – are from a power standpoint we’re fairly redundant. We have generators here on site in mcc, but you know we also have control centers around the world, gary that that we can leverage into whenever any any one of us has a particular issue going on um at their at their site, and so when you have A program like the space station that’s been around 20 plus years um. I i don’t want to.

I don’t want to say we’ve seen it all, but we most definitely have had our challenges through the years when it comes to supporting so so one path is the facilities and we’re in really good shape there. The other facet is just our people and making sure that um. You know we have the the the people available to come in and and uh and work and make sure that we’re keeping an eye on on our our friends and colleagues up in low earth orbit and and uh and having their back and and i think the Team has done a really nice job here again, because we’ve we’re very well practiced living here on the gulf coast, we’re pretty well practiced at contingency operations and and knowing how to staff the facilities and and make sure, at the same time that we’re taking care of Our people and their families – hey, that’s, right and the crew is going to be expecting uh. All this eight thousand pounds of cargo here in the next couple of days tell us what’s ahead for uh, once cygnus arrives, uh in terms of capture cargo operations and some of the science on board sure um, you know we. We talk a lot of times around here in terms of dominoes and and we have a lot of dominoes stacked up right now. When you look into into february in the in the early early part of march um, getting getting the vehicle to station getting cygnus there is, is that first domino and and with that we’ll get the hatch open here on the day that it arrives, we’ve got some Some key science objectives that we want to get going in that first couple of days, so so the first two or three days after it gets there will will be heavily and and intensely focused on on the science that we need to get up and running.

Um. Then shortly after that, merely you know four or five days after that we’ll be heavy into doing a set of eva preps, uh we’re uh. At this point planning on on going out to do an eva in the in the um, you know possibly as early as next weekend, uh we we’ve got a double double eda, planned, um and so we’ll we’ll get busy on that. As quick as we get, the cygnus uh let’s get the science up and going that came up in cygnus and then we’ll we’ll be on on to to doing evas a lot coming up here in the near term. Kenny todd. Thank you so much for uh joining us here at the end of our launch coverage. Thanks for having me gary, i appreciate it again. We had a successful launch of uh northrop grumman’s, crs 15 mission on time today, 12 36 and 49 seconds p.m.

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