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Launch countdown
09 March, 2008 03:08
Charlotte Beskow: "We are finally here!"
A contribution to the blog from Charlotte Beskow, ATV Flight Operations Engineer. Charlotte is located at the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France.
"Wow, I can not believe it… we are finally here! After so many years of work the actual countdown is coming almost as a surprise. As I left work yesterday evening, the countdown had started and with a start I realised that this was now 'for real'.
The countdown clock said 'Launch – 30 hrs, 11 min…' an event that for so long had been one year away had suddenly started! I almost felt that I had no time to go home and sleep…
Now it is Saturday and the clock shows launch – 6 hrs and 2 min.
It has been raining heavily in Kourou, but that in itself does not compromise the launch. ATV is active and transmitting TM that we can see on our screens here in Toulouse. ATV CC is just about to start the TM checks with the partners in Houston and Moscow.
On the French television we just saw that they did a piece on the upcoming launch…
So far everything is running as planned… keep your fingers crossed!"
Thanks Charlotte. I just had my 'wow!' moment too as you can see from the last post! :-)
--Maria
"Wow, I can not believe it… we are finally here! After so many years of work the actual countdown is coming almost as a surprise. As I left work yesterday evening, the countdown had started and with a start I realised that this was now 'for real'.
The countdown clock said 'Launch – 30 hrs, 11 min…' an event that for so long had been one year away had suddenly started! I almost felt that I had no time to go home and sleep…
Now it is Saturday and the clock shows launch – 6 hrs and 2 min.
It has been raining heavily in Kourou, but that in itself does not compromise the launch. ATV is active and transmitting TM that we can see on our screens here in Toulouse. ATV CC is just about to start the TM checks with the partners in Houston and Moscow.
On the French television we just saw that they did a piece on the upcoming launch…
So far everything is running as planned… keep your fingers crossed!"
Thanks Charlotte. I just had my 'wow!' moment too as you can see from the last post! :-)
--Maria
2 comments | "Charlotte Beskow: "We are finally here!""
09-03-2008 • 04:10:14
Hello to everybody in the team, just woke up to watch the launch live here in Central Europe (Czech Republic, to be precise). This is really a dream coming true for all of us Space enthusiasts (especially European), such as the Columbus launch was recently. I am keeping my fingers crossed all the time, and may everything go smoothly! Thank you guys for everything you are doing, it's a fantastic job!
09-03-2008 • 04:22:24
Congrats to your friendly and professional team - with lots of dedicated people who have been working for years to bring ATV to this stage (including Beskow and Santini) . Enjoyed the time I got to spend in Europe and Russian a couple years back.
Launch should be great and can't wait for docking day.