Mission Rehearsal 5 Completed!

The LRO Mission Operations Team completed Mission Rehearsal 5 last evening. After 5 days of round the clock operations, the Ops team did a great job successfully getting LRO to the moon. Congratulations to everyone!

Also last night, Altas successfully launched the WGS payload. Now, they are out of our way.

These were some of the last major hurdles we had left and now they are behind us. We just have to get through the final push....

“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.” Dave Barry

Fairing Cleaned and Spell Checked

The LRO fairing has completed repair of the logo and contamination inspection. It has been moved to the spin bay for further processing. LRO is tying up a few loose ends before getting ready for launch configuration starting in a week.

Cross your fingers that WGS launches tonight!

“My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.” A. A. Milne

MR#5 continues

All is well with Mission Rehearsal #5, now beginning Thursday, day 3. We are (simulated) 275,000 km away from the Earth, cruising to the moon without incident.

Mission Rehearsal # 5 Ongoing

LRO is 2 hours from launch during our 5 day Launch and Early Mission Rehearsal. The MOC will fly the Orbiter (at KSC plugged into the Dynamic Simulator) to the moon. Up through Launch and initial acquisition LRO control resides at KSC with the LRO launch team and after separation (simulated) from the Centaur the MOC at GSFC assumes control.

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Mid-Week Update

Monday we loaded an updated RTS5 onto the Orbiter and tested it. Also on Monday we performed some loose-end Start Tracker tests and worked on procs to support upcoming SIMs.

Tuesday LRO executed SIM#23 which was an integrated Launch Day Simulation. This was a very successful activity during which the Ground Networks, the MOC, the LSR team, the KSC support team, and of course the Orbiter were used to practice the entire sequence of launch day countdown activities up to launch. The Team handled the injected anomalies and green cards extremely well. Congratulations to all involved.

Work, both at KSC and at GSFC, now focuses on preparing for Mission Rehearsal #5 (MR#5) which is a Launch thru LOI rehearsal. MR#5 is a repeat of our first rehearsal, MR#2, and is the last major Rehearsal we have planned.

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. - Wernher von Braun

Mini-RF Testing Continues

In the photo the RF Absorber Wall can be seen that enables Mini-RF free radiation during testing.

Status On Thursday March 19, 2009

Mini-RF testing is ongoing until sometime this evening and will resume tomorrow. The Mini-RF Team is her conducting their final set of testing prior to flight.

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five." - Groucho Marx

Back on the Dolly

Our fabulous mechanical team has moved LRO off the aronson table, back to the dolly yesterday morning. The electrical team has remated the EGSE, and the spacecraft has been powered up. We successfully tested our lightning protection box for the PVAN and our emergency power-down procedures (big red button).