Getting Ready for Launch Countdown

Fourteenyears ago this week we were doing our final preparations on Columbia and the ground systems, getting ready to enter launch countdown (LCD).

With launch scheduled for January 16, the 3-day countdown was to begin Monday, 1/13. After dusting off vehicle and ground systems (and ourselves!) last week following our 9-day holiday period vacation, we were conducting several final tests that weren’t in the launch procedure but needed to be done as close to it as possible. On the schedule was i...