This was a good day as the first of a few milestones had been reached. The completion of the AFT’s showing that nominally everything is OK with the satellite.

To celebrate this, and the fact it was Friday, a few of the team went to Hangar-7.

Hangar-7 is a bar/ restaurant started by a SpaceX employee with a space theme and named after the SpaceX Hangar. They make very good pizza’s.

The General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) was held at the Austria Center in Vienna where Earthcare was a key topic.

Also for your amusement the following picture is of Bill and Gianfranco, two of the Launch team members, whilst supporting the Envisat launch in 2002

The weather at the base was overcast and cool but did not dampen the enthusiasm of the team to get started with the AFT’s.

The day concluded with the redundant side of the satellite testing completed, just leaving the nominal side to be tested in the morning.

Today the team at VSFB continued to prepare the satellite for the system tests later this week which are performed to ensure the satellite has survived the transport to the launch site and is still operating as expected.

In the cleanroom SpaceX had mated the Payload adaptor (PLA) on top of the Payload Attach Fitting (PAF) and will continue the preparation and testing in readiness for our mating in the future.

We also met some of the other users of the facility

Today also more team members arrived to support the testing of the satellite.

The opportunity was taken to go for a nice mexican meal together

Well one of you noticed i had slipped a day! Dates now corrected😊

Today at the base was a day of meetings and some work on the satellite in preparation for the start of the Abbreviated Functional Tests (AFT) later this week.

At ESOC the A-Team simulation #7 was running despite some of the team having trouble getting to Darmstadt due to the weather.

The day started with Maria returning the power supply for her hair dryer , only needed 3Kwatts😂, before she returned with Emilio to the Netherlands.

Bill also had not managed to replace his V8 but did get alternative transport.

Then a couple of major events, the team had managed to successfully switch on the satellite for the first time leaving Europe.

Then secondly completed a fitcheck with the Launch Vehicle Adapter (LVA) which involved carefully lifting the satellite and placing it on the LVA, fitting the clamp band to hold it in place, then installing the umbilical and purge connections to ensure they fitted correctly. The umbilicals are needed to power up and monitor the satellite during the countdown phase and the purge line to keep the instruments clean up to the point of Liftoff.

A great way to finish a Monday!

Pictures to follow

This was a day of rest for the team although the weather was still wet until the afternoon when the team had a chance to do some sight seeing and for some escape hiking

The team continued some activities on the Satellite before going to Buellton for the first Launch Campaign event hosted by ESA to welcome everyone to the start of the campaign.

Nice location, great company and excellent food, what a way to start a campaign!

The first thing to do to the satellite was give it some energy. The batteries were connected and the battery charging started.

At ESOC the simulation campaigns were continuing, The project support team is participating in a LEOP contingency simulation of an Orbit Control Manoeuvre.

Here are some pictures from the project support room showing the ESA and Airbus teams at work.

Today was as you can imagine was a day of anticipation as the satellite was finally going to be exposed to the world again after a long period of travelling and storage.

The satellite container had been allowed to acclimatise overnight and the cleanroom regain its cleanliness status. It was time for all to be revealed.

The right people were available to fit the anechoic caps

The satellite was then moved into a side room so the main door of the clean room could be opened to transfer the spacecraft container outside.

Some thought divine intervention was needed to finalise the activities

The satellite stayed in its hide away whilst the cleanroom recovered its cleanliness.

The satellite was then moved back into the cleanroom for the night in preparation for activities to start tomorrow.

Today was a special day for the team, the weather was perfect and their baby was moved from the NASA building to the Astrotech building and safely under their control.

Leaving NASA building.

Arrival at Astrotech and the processing facility

The tarpaulin was then removed and the container cleaned

The container was then left overnight

And the Earthcare flag