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Contact:
Anne Toulouse |
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Contact:
Anne Toulouse |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
97-98
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., April 30, 1997 -- McDonnell Douglas (NYSE: MD) will resume Delta II launch operations in May.
From Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., a Delta II model 7920 will boost the first satellites of the IRIDIUM
The next Delta II launch will take place May 11 at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., where a three-stage model 7925 will lift the Hughes Space and Communications Thor II satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.
These May launches will be the first since the Jan. 17 failure of a Delta II during a U.S. Air Force launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from Cape Canaveral. Earlier this month the Air Force issued a press release stating that a split in the casing of a solid rocket motor caused the failure.
"The Air Force has worked closely with us and our subcontractor team," said Jay Witzling, division director, Delta II and Titan programs for McDonnell Douglas.
"We have taken the appropriate steps to enhance Delta's flight safety and success to include additional inspections, analysis, testing and enhancements of procedures regarding solid rocket motor processing and handling."
"For example," he said, "the company conducted ultrasonic nondestructive inspections involving up to 200,000 measurements for each solid rocket motor to be flown during the May 2 and May 11 launches."
In parallel with the investigation, McDonnell Douglas has worked with the Air Force and NASA to move Delta launch operations from the blockhouses near the launch pads to remote sites.
At Vandenberg, telemetry and computers will remain in the blockhouse near the Space Launch Complex (SLC) 2 launch pad, but command and monitoring for launch operations will now be done from a building more than eight miles away.
At Cape Canaveral a planned move to a new operations building more than four miles from the Delta launch pads at SLC 17 was accelerated from August of this year to May. Fiber-optic cables connect work stations in the new building to the launch pad, transmitting command data to the rocket and receiving vehicle status, telemetry and feedback information.