[meteorite-list] Jordan Fall

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:46:22 2004
Message-ID: <200105031633.JAA01630_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

>
> By the way Ron, it seems you are somewhat of a hero. When I was at Kennedy
> Space Center for the launch of the Mars 2001 Odyssey mission, Lynn Lowery
> said that you noticed, via your webcam, water flowing on the floor where the
> Mars spacecraft was housed. You were able to contact the right people soon
> enough to stop the flood from reaching damaging the spacecraft, and thus,
> once again reaffirming that JPL does indeed stand for "Just Plain Lucky."
>
> By the way Ron, what were you doing looking at your website late on a Friday
> night anyway?
>

Well, as you may know, I've setup a webcam down at the KSC on the Mars Odyssey
spacecraft. I took a snapshot every 2 minutes. I made time lapse movies
from the images. At the end of each day, I would go through the images
I've archived for that day, and create the movies. It was during
this that I noticed a water leak occurred in the clean room.
See the article below.

Ron B.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eye on Mars Odyssey Webcam Catches Leak
JPL Universe
February 2, 2001

Since the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrived at Kennedy Space
Center in Florida last month, Ron Baalke of Section 312 has at the
end of each day created an archive of images from a "Web camera" that
shows Internet fans ongoing preparations for the spacecraft's launch
this April.

But while checking images from the clean room at the Cape on the
evening of Friday, Jan. 19, Baalke noticed something quite out of the
ordinary. And his quick reaction has helped to save the Odyssey
project a major headache.

"I saw a brown liquid spread out across the floor, including
underneath the spacecraft and the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS)
instrument sitting nearby," Baalke said. He noticed the leak at 5:30
p.m. Pacific time, about 20 minutes after it started. The spacecraft was
unattended, the technical crew having retired for the evening.

Baalke immediately called George Pace, the project manager, and
Giulio Cesarone, the Lockheed Martin 2001 test conductor. "I bolted
out of my chair," Pace said, then called KSC officials, who arrived
within 10 minutes to stop the leak and mop up.

The brown liquid that Baalke had seen was from a rust inhibitor used
in the GRS cooling unit. More than 2,200 liters (500 gallons) of
water had been dumped onto the clean room floor.

Fortunately, Pace said, the Odyssey spacecraft was up on a dolly,
several inches off the floor, and "it's doubtful it would have been
harmed." Neither the GRS instrument nor ground support equipment
suffered any damage. Some cabling on the floor was wet but unharmed,
and powered operations were suspended over the weekend for cleanup
and drying of the cables.

Things could have been much worse. Pace noted that instruments
tracking humidity and particle counts in the clean room would have
detected the anomaly, "but that might have been thousands of gallons
later," he said. A much larger cleanup operation would have hindered
the project's testing activities.

"We on the Odyssey Project compliment Ron for taking the actions that
he did," Pace said.
Received on Thu 03 May 2001 12:33:47 PM PDT