January 14, 2004
Lots of progress has been made today with
the motors, and the payload has been moved
from the payload assembly building down
to the blockhouse (see the pictures from Steve
and Eric, attached).
In the pictures you can see two of the
motor stages: the big black one with
the fins is the Black Brant, and the smaller
cylinder with no fins is the Nikha (it has
no fins because it does not start burning
until the first two stages (the Brant and the
Terrier) have taken it out of the atmosphere,
so there's no air for the fins to push on.)
The fins on the Terrier and the Brant are
canted very slightly (about 2 degrees) which
makes the entire rocket spin like a rifle
bullet for stability.
The Terrier motor is already hung on the rail.
In the top pictures you can see the assembled
payload being packed up to be moved to the
blockhouse. In the bottom pictures is an
arctic fox; they live below one of the building
in the complex. They look like bouncy fat cats.
Our web page is getting a few days behind but
hopefully this will be remedied soon. There is
another web page with lots of pictures at
http://www.rocketrange.no/campaigns/completed/sersio_2004/
which is maintained by the Andoya Rocket Range personnel.
Another useful site we will use is at
http://superdarn.jhuapl.edu/rt/map/big.html
which shows the assimilated radar data and
a modelled convection pattern. What we want
is big flows (narrowly spaced contours) across
and south of Svalbard, sometime between 0700 and
1200 UT.
I hear it's pretty cold ("infinitely cold" says Joo) in
Hanover, but it's colder here!
-K
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