I like to keep on eye on proceedings at KSC..

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countd.../video45lh.html

and this place..





has just had a webcam turned on - looks like the old MER final build facility - and I imagine MRO will go there as well before being integrated to the launch vehicle down the road at the LockMart facility.

Doug

Someone should tell the guy sitting at the desk that we're all watching him

Infact - I think they're getting the place ready for it to arrive soon - that white pipe will be to vent the spacecraft with clean air, and the cherry pickers will be so they can get to the top of the spacecraft (MRO is seriously big)

I used to watch MER testing and assembly more often and more dedicated than any fan of Big Brother

For those trying to get bearings - Camera 5 is looking down the length of the building - and Camera 13 is situated on the left wall just out of view of Camera 5 - looking down at the right wall.

If you want to point something out specifically (they will pan and zoom eventually) - then best to save an image and attach to your message

I cant wait to see the solar arrays - for some reason as a 3d animator, I've always loved solar arrays - they're an animation conunderum

Ahh - they're shutting the far end, I guess they'll unload form a truck into there, purge it clean, the open the partition again - then bring the spacecraft thru to this half.

I have got a program at work that's saving them to our webserver so I can check in and see if there's any action

Doug

MRO to leave Lockheed Martin in Denver tomorrow.

Hopes high for new Mars craft being sent to NASA this week
By Katy Human
Thursday, April 28, 2005

Jefferson County - Engineer Kevin McNeill compares the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to his two children, who recently left home for college.

"You're hopeful everything you've done in 18 years of raising that child has prepared him for life on his own," McNeill said Wednesday, hours before he and his colleagues boxed the school-bus-size craft for shipping.

On Friday, McNeill and the rest of his Lockheed Martin team will send their $500 million baby to Florida. NASA is expected to launch the craft Aug. 10.The unmanned craft will take nearly seven months to reach Mars on a mission that will cost $720 million.

"We're sending up the most capable instrumentation we've ever sent to another planet," said Jim Graf of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Previous Mars missions have performed well, he said, but raised more questions than they answered. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will return more science data than all past Mars missions combined, should answer many of those questions, he said.

One previous Mars craft captured pictures of what may be gullies running down a crater. The new orbiter will shoot far more detailed photographs of the region, probably nailing down whether wind erosion or water carved the features, Graf said. Because water almost certainly flowed over Mars in the past, the planet is the best place to search for life, said Lockheed scientist Ben Clark.

The new Mars mission may also help solve a 6-year-old mystery: Where is the Mars Polar Lander? That spacecraft, also built by Lockheed, apparently crashed into Mars in 1999 after its landing rockets shut down prematurely. The new orbiter has such sophisticated cameras, it might be able to see evidence of the crash, Graf said.

Lockheed has had mixed success with Mars missions. Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor were successes, delivering data and images that hinted at a watery past on Mars, for example. But the Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter failed.
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I don't know if they are sending MRO by air (which would take a day) or via road convoy (several days).

If you want to have a webpage to monitor the two webcams without refreshing etc...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/mro_webcam.htm

It'll autorefresh every 15 seconds or so - and should fit in a browser window at 1024. Click on the images to get actual full size - they've been shrunk to 500p across on that page.

Enjoy

Doug

I've emailed the KSC web guys asking if they'll switch one of the realplayer feeds they carry to carry one of the MRO feeds. The ISS stuff gets two or three feeds at the moment - NO FAIR

Doug

They've taken off one solary array and mounted it on a stand.

They now appear to me attaching the HGA gimbal assembley on the platform above HiRise

doug

What's the big balloon shown in the right image, here
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/mro_webcam.htm ?

jG

When I first saw it as a thumbnail, I thought it was the feint reflection of a fat guys shirt in a window

They use them to try and simulated weightlessness for some deployments - possibly sharad on MRO?

I've saved an image and attached it.

Doug

Ahh - the bag is there to take off some of the weight of the HGA mounting, so it can undergo deployment testing

Deployed 90 degrees , turned 180 degrees

What in the name of Moses is this?
It must be important if they all have to sit there and gaurd it

Payload fairing

One of the cunning things about the Atlas integration process is that instead of putting the payload in a canister, taking the canister to the pad, open the canister, put the payload on top of the rocket, get the fairing, and fit it around the payload....

You simply put the payload in the fairing here, then take the whole lot, fairing and spacecraft inside - over to the tower and plop it on top - the fairing acting as a pseudo-cannister protecting the payload.

Doug

Thanks Doug. Makes sense.

As for this, oooooo, heavy lift.