WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK ENDING 19 MARCH 2004:
GRAVITY PROBE B LAUNCH INFORMATION
The official Gravity Probe B launch date is Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 10:09 AM Pacific Daylight Time, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, sent out official launch invitations this week. If you received an invitation to the December 6th launch, regardless of your response to that invitation (or lack thereof) you should be receiving an invitation to the April 17th launch in the next few days. The launch invitations will provide more specific information about launch activities. We will also provide more launch details in these highlights, as they become available. Please note that the launch invitation list is now closed. If you wish to view the launch firsthand at Vandenberg, but are not on the official invitation list, there are several public areas in the vicinity of Vandenberg that will provide good vantage points. If you have any questions about your launch invitation, please contact Sandra Turner in the Protocol Office at Marshall Space Flight Center: sandra.h.turner@nasa.gov.
On launch day here at Stanford University, we have reserved a large auditorium for local GP-B staff, their families, and anyone else who is interested (press, and media included), to view the launch, projected on a large screen, via NASA TV. Members of the GP-B team will be on hand to provide commentary and answer questions. More details will be posted on this Web site in upcoming highlights.
We update these highlights every Friday, and we will post any new information about the launch on this Web site and on the GPB Update email list as soon as it becomes available.
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE OPERATIONS THIS WEEK
- Re-installation of the final two solar arrays was completed this week.
The four solar arrays are installed one at a time. After each solar array is installed, a walk-out test (unfolding) is performed to ensure that the array deploys properly. The space vehicle is then rotated for installation of the next solar array.
- On Thursday, the temperature of the dewar's main tank was 1.7199K, and the main tank was 95.5% full. The Guard Tank level was 47.1%.
- General functional testing of the spacecraft is continuing to proceed on schedule, and the spacecraft has been performing nominally.
- The launch vehicle is surrounded by the Mobile Service Tower (MST) on the launch pad. Boeing technicians are preparing to mate the space vehicle with the launch vehicle on April 1, 2004.
Photos: After completing installation and a deployment check of the final solar array in the clean room at Vandenberg, the team posed for a photo. Click on the thumbnail to view an enlarged copy of the photo.
GRAVITY PROBE B IN THE NEWS
The official pre-launch Gravity Probe B mission and science briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. is scheduled for Friday, April 2, 2004 at 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The briefing will be covered live on NASA TV. Provisions have been made for local San Francisco Bay Area press and media to view this briefing via NASA TV and participate in the Question and Answer session after the briefing from an auditorium at the NASA Ames facility, in Mountain View, CA.
On Sunday evening, December 28, 2003, the Cover story on the CBS Evening News was on the subject of time—examined from both human and cosmic perspectives. The story featured interviews with a manager from Torneau Time Machines (the largest watch store in New York City), physicist Brian Greene (a proponent of String Theory), and our own Gravity Probe B Principal Investigator, Francis Everitt. Typical of television news, the entire story lasted a little over three minutes, but it was heart warming to see Francis and our spacecraft on the national news. Perhaps the best sound byte from Francis was a quote from St. Augustine that CBS chose not to use: "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? ... He was preparing hell for those that would pry into such profound mysteries."
Click
here to view a video clip of the CBS News story about time.
RECEIVE GRAVITY PROBE B WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS BY EMAIL
If you are interested in automatically receiving these weekly highlights and other important GP-B mission information by email, you can subscribe to our Gravity Probe B Update email list by sending an email message to "majordomo@lists.Stanford.edu" with the command "subscribe gpb-update" in the body of the message (not in the Subject line). You can unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time by sending an email message to the same address with the command, "unsubscribe gpb-update" in the body of the message.
Previous Highlight
Index of Highlights