The new kid and the A Team
It's all business inside the launch control center as the KiNET-X countdown rolls on
All stations are go, reporting good for launch. One minute and counting on the final night of the countdown. You can’t write a better story than this.
A ROOKIE SITS in a major NASA range control room every night of the nine-day launch period.
That’s Peter Delamere.
“I'm surrounded by the A Team,” he said. “That's why I'm allowed to lead this thing because I've got the best on this team.”
The BlackBrant XII rocket on the launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. NASA photo by Terry Zaperach
It was some misplaced comfort.
“My attitude going into it is ‘How could this be hard? What could possibly go wrong?’” Delamere said. “But the very first night when we started running through these checklists, it just hit me that ‘Oh my god, this is for real now.’”
“The first night was a rehearsal, but the second night was live and I realized then that I didn't have nearly enough preparation. I told Rob [Pfaff] this in the aftermath. I said, ‘First-time PIs really need a boot camp.’”
Pfaff, who is also leader of NASA’s Electric Field Investigation Team at Goddard Space Flight Center, has provided electric field, magnetic field and plasma density measurements for numerous NASA sounding rocket missions.
On this final night of the launch window, optimism finally existed.
And the seconds ticked down.
“There's just nothing you can do about anything at this point,” Delamere said. “We have everything we need. Everything is go, so what can you do?”
He was sitting at his station, near that large red, white and blue NASA logo, maybe with just a bottle of water.
“I was already excessively caffeinated for the day.”
Top photo of Wallops Flight Facility operations center is for illustartion only and is not from the KiNET-X launch. Photo courtesy of NASA
