Crunch Time

Crunch Time is the month-long period preceding the Mission. During this time, there are frequently work sessions on Thursdays and Saturdays as well as on Fridays. Before the mission can launch, doors, cameras, and the network must be functioning perfectly, and the Planetary Surface must be nearing completion. In 2008-09, the mission launched four days late due to the aforementioned systems not being set up, and even after "launching" these systems were still not ready as launch happened 4 hours late due to Network Failure and the multiple planetary systems were not finished till minutes before EVA's.