Good Morning, I am Mr Dave Madden, the Director for the MILITARY Satellite Communications Wing at the Space and Missile Systems Center. Thank you for joining into today's media telecom on the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite. I wanted to give you all an opportunity to ask questions on the status of AEHF-1 satellite. On the call with me today are Col Mike Sarchet, MILSATCOM Protected Group Commander and Dr Wayne Goodman, MILSATCOM Aerospace General Manager.

Before I get into specifics to date I would like to provide a basic background associated with our on board propulsion system and the original baseline orbit raising plan.

We have 3 propulsion systems on board the satellite:

(1) The Liquid Apogee Engine (LAE) uses a bi-propellant mixture consisting of hydrazine as the fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as the oxidizer to produce about 100 lbs of thrust. The LAE is designed to provide the thrust for the spacecraft's initial orbit transfer maneuvers.

(2) The monopropellant hydrazine thrusters have two distinct functions that are accomplished with six 5 lb thrusters and twelve 0.2 lb thrusters. The 5 lb thrusters provide propellant settling acceleration and control authority during the LAE burns. The 0.2 lb thrusters are used for yaw attitude control of the spacecraft during transfer orbit maneuvers and for control during on-orbit operations.

(3) The highly efficient Hall Current Thrusters use xenon fuel and produce about 0.06 lb of thrust for orbit rising and to place the spacecraft into geosynchronous orbit. The HCTs are also used for on-orbit operations, e.g.,station keeping, repositioning maneuvers.

The nominal orbit raising strategy for the Advanced EHF System consists of two primary phases. The first phase involves three apogee-based burns of a liquid apogee engine with the goal of raising the orbit perigee from roughly 230 km to 19,000 km and decreasing the orbit inclination from 22° to 6°. The LAE phase is designed to complete ~6 days after launch. The second phase of the orbit raising period consists of the use of electric propulsion via hall current thrusters (HCTs). The HCTs are high efficiency, low-thrust components that complete the circularization to the geosynchronous altitude and reduce the inclination to the initial operational condition of 4.8°. This phase is designed to take ~90 days to complete.

Major satellite events to-date ....

- 14 Aug - Flawless launch. The LRSW/ULA team did a spectacular job of getting us to orbit, flawless execution and a beautiful morning launch

- 14 Aug - LV/SV Separation

- 14 Aug - Initial earth acquisition

- 15 Aug - LAE shut down when it did not achieve expected acceleration

- 17 Aug -LAE again shut down when it did not achieve the expected acceleration.

- 20 Aug - Reaction Engine Assembly (REA) collision avoidance maneuver at apogee #10

From the performance data collected from the 2 aborted LAE burns, we believe the LAE is unusable, and at this point we have no plans to fire that engine again.

Currently we are following a rigorous and thorough mission assurance process. The best technical experts in the nation from Lockheed Martin and the Aerospace Corporation have teamed together with the Air Force to evaluate the spacecraft health, understand the cause of the anomaly, and develop an optimal means to achieve an operational orbit. The vast experience with spacecraft systems of this joint team, particularly in the areas of propulsion systems and orbital mechanics, has been invaluable to the development of a plan to deliver AEHF-1 to its mission orbit and subsequently meet mission objectives. To complete this extremely important work, we have organized ourselves into the following 4 teams, with hand-picked representatives from the Air Force, Lockheed-Martin, and the Aerospace Corporation:

1. Vehicle Operations. This team will maintain the health/safety of AEHF-1 during the ongoing assessment and preplanning phase.

2. Mission Planning. This team has two tasks. First it will perform an assessment of any safety of vehicle risks associated with maintaining our current orbit (drag effect, heating, radiation effects, AFSCN coverage gaps, eclipse season, collision avoidance or COLA, etc). This analysis will establish timeline limits and activities required before execution of the orbit raising plan. Second it will perform the mission design and analysis to develop options for maneuvering AEHF-1 to an operational mission orbit.

3. Anomaly Investigation. This team will work to establish a root cause and corrective action for the LAE subsystem.

4. Integration. This team will oversee/direct the activities of the 3 teams above and serve as my interface for all ongoing AEHF-1 efforts.

Highlights from the re-planning effort ....

The mission planning team has developed an orbit raising strategy consisting of four segments: (1) Raise Perigee to an intermediate, or Parking Orbit, (2) conduct additional REA Apogee burns to more than double the current perigee, (3) Hall Current Thruster Apogee Maneuvers, and (4) Hall Current Thruster continuous maneuvers to achieve final mission orbit.

The Air Force approved the first segment of the orbit raising plan, and we started Segment 1 on the 29th of Aug @ ~0700 PDT. This first segment consists of a number of burns over a 7 day period using the 5 lb REAs, raising the spacecraft to a parking/intermediate orbit ~950 km (an orbit outside the effects of the earth's atmosphere). After each burn we will assess results, conduct new orbit determination, and make adjustments for subsequent burns as necessary. By moving to a higher perigee immediately we will no longer need to fight the earth's high-atmospheric drag.

The first burn of Segment 1 started ~0700 PDT on 29 Aug and ended 40 minutes later, per plan. Satellite performance before, during, and after this first burn was nominal.

Analysis/assessment/options for the additional three segment of the orbit raising process are in full swing. Initial indications are that we will be able to raise the AEHF-1 to the originally planned orbit, although it will take several months longer than the original plan.

On the Anomaly investigation, the team has developed a comprehensive root cause failure analysis or fish bone diagram and is deliberately working thru disposition of each bone, sub-bone, and sub-sub-bone ... in terms of 'not credible,' 'unlikely,' and 'credible.' Understanding root cause is essential before moving forward with AEHF SV-2 launch plans.

In closing, the Space and Missile Systems Center, in concert with HQ AFSPC, is following a rigorous and thorough mission assurance process to examine changes to the AEHF-1 planned orbit raising operations. We have a credible plan to meet mission objectives, and we are now executing to that plan.