Campaign status on 1/5/2012

Dear all, 
It is now about one month that the MSG teams (Thales, Eumetsat, ESA) arrived in French Guiana for the MSG-3 launch campaign. 
The last weeks were quite busy with the MSG-3 payload and system testing, but so far the campaign is running nominally.
Activities for the next weeks will be related to battery reconditioning, Unified Propulsion System and Antenna connection tests. Then, the Solar Array (re)integration, and helium tank pressurisation will end this sequence in EPCU S5C before a transfer of MSG-3 to the fuelling S5B area planned on 24/05/12 at the moment is authorised.

Before this date, Ariane flight  VA206 (JCSAT-13 and VINASAT-2), the launch, just before MSG-3 should take place on 15/05/2012. This is of course is an important date for us, as any VA206 significant delay could impact the VA207 launch planned on 19/06/2012.

Be sure, we shall report on these events in the coming weeks.

We take the opportunity of this short status message to thank the readers of this blog for their sustained interest in following our activity where ever they are: from Rio de Janeiro to Baikonur, from San Francisco to Berlin, Cork  Cannes, Liege, Paris, Marseilles, Noordwijk, Amsterdam, etc... as indicated by the record log. Their support is our best reward to continue reporting on this campaign.

Last but not least, here the morale of the teams is good and motivation is high.

A greeting from Kourou to all of  you!

Keep you posted.

 Kirill Blogovitch

PS: For those of you interested to get a flavor of French Guiana, don't forget to look at the Alamach which is updated regularly.