Smoke and fumes were boiling away from the hole in the ground, indicating that launch preparations were under way.

I turned 360, surveying the aircraft in various stages of launch preparation.

If they had, he reasoned, then it was doubtful that the crew would have the luxury of spending the next two weeks completing Titan's launch preparations.

Those demands grew urgent when he started politely asking to inspect our launch preparations.

The railway is used for all stages of launch preparation, and all spacecraft are transported to the launchpads by the special Schnabel cars.

Switch two: Fully automatic launch preparation.

Thus, once the kerosene was chilled initially, it could remain so for the brief time needed to finish launch preparations.

The spacecraft left Bremen for Kourou on 31 August 2012 to begin launch preparations.

Another primary aim is to achieve much shorter launch preparation time.

As the launch preparations continued, due to lower cloud cover ceilings it was changed to 70% and at liftoff to 80%.