Genesis Launch Campaign Overview (3:43) audio

Boeing's Kris Walsh describes the launch campaign, which starts with the pre-vehicle on stand review 45 days prior to launch. The campaign continues through the time that the spacecraft is in its perfect orbit and everyone cheers!

TRANSCRIPTION of GENESIS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW video:

Our launch campaign starts approximately 45 days before launch where we have a pre-vehicle on-stand review. What we do in that review is we bring in our customer, JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and Lockheed Martin, and we'll go through every aspect of the build of this vehicle -- also all the mission-specific analysis. It takes us four to six hours to go through that. Anything that during the build of this vehicle, from any of our suppliers through assembly will be talked about, will be brought up, will be discussed, and it'll be closed. Most of that we will have closed with our customer prior to that. At the end of that, we will poll, and get everybody's concurrence that we're ready to go vehicle-on-stand and that's when we would be starting to put the vehicle up on the stand. At about 14 days before launch, I'll fly down to [the] launchsite and it'll be the review where everybody is in concurrence that both the vehicle and the satellite are ready for the satellite to be put on top of the vehicle. Then the next phase of the launch campaign starts about 5 days prior to launch with the flight readiness review. This time we have not only Boeing, NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration], KSC [Kennedy Space Center], JPL, and Lock. Mart. [Lockheed Martin], but we'll have the Airforce Range. We'll have additional NASA headquarters people and other mission assurance people from NASA and Boeing. We'll go through the review all over again, plus anything that happened that might not have been to our procedures while we put the vehicle up. And all that will be discussed and closed. And then we'll poll again. At that polling, we have permission, Boeing has permission, to load fuel onto the second stage. This is a very important polling for us, because once we put fuel on the second stage, the clock is ticking. We have about 35 days now to launch that vehicle, or we may have to get rid of the second stage. So it's a very important polling for us. Our launch will have a mission rehearsal. We'll bring all the satellite people, and NASA and KSC will go through basically a countdown. They'll know when they're polled during the countdown, what the response is they're supposed to be given, how to use all the equipment in the mission director center or whatever facility they're in. And then we'll have the launch readiness review. We'll be given the weather. We'll be given an idea of the range O.K.; again any issues with the vehicle or the satellite. And basically that gives us, at the polling there, we get the go for launch . Then we meet four hours prior to launch. We get on console, check everything out, and then we go through a very, very standard countdown from the last four hours. And once we do get liftoff, we don't cheer or congratulate anybody until Genesis is in its perfect orbit as we promised our customer. That's when we cheer, and that's when our customer cheers.