Home
FTP
Sersio
Cascades
Enstrophy
Interactive
Personnel
|
January 15, 2004
Hi!
As you can see from Steve's pictures below, the
payload and motors are now all on the rail.
Tonight the crew are working on "rigging the
umbis" which means connecting up the electrical
harnesses so we can communicate with and power
the payload with external batteries and communications
before launch; and also building a styrofoam "house"
around the payload to keep it warm on the rail.
You can see the sort of dryer-hose looking contraption
that blows warm air up into the foam block house.
(The styrofoam house is basically blown apart when
the first motor fires.)
The entire rail is horizontal at the moment, and
enclosed in a sliding house which can be pulled
away from the launchrail and payload on two rails.
Then the rail can be raised to "vertical" launch
position for launch. (Actually we launch several
degrees off vertical...we don't want it to come
back down on our heads.)
On the payload you can see lots of "red tags", that
are to be "removed before flight"; they are connected
to things that have to come off before flight.
The darker grey areas on the payload skin are the
antennas, for telemetry (all the data are transmitted
during the flight, to dishes here at Ny Alesund and
also in Tromso), and for GPS reception (so we know
where the payload is.) Note that collecting GPS
data on a receiver that is spinning at 1 to 6 Hz is
not a simple task....
This afternoon the science team had a conference
bringing together the rocket group, the optics groups,
and the radar people. Most of the scientists are in
Longyearbyen where the Eiscat radars are. The science
group will have a "practice run" tomorrow morning
from 0400-0900 UT (0500-1000 local time, or 0700-noon magnetic
local time). We will exercise the radars, the cameras,
the meridian scan photometers, and any other instruments
we can get our hands on.
Tomorrow morning at 10 local time we will have the
"practice count" for the rocket as well, running through
the entire prelaunch and launch sequence in its entirety
(except for actually firing the motors.) If all goes
well, we will take Friday afternoon and evening off,
and have our first real countdown early Saturday morning.
The science window is from 0500-1000 UT on Saturday
(0600-1100 local time), so the team will have "station time"
at 0200 UT (3:00 am local time) on Saturday morning.
The biggest concern at the moment is the fact that the
cafeteria goes by extremely strict times, and breakfast
doesn't start until 7:30am (10am on weekends!) We are
all hoping we don't starve to death by the end of
Saturday morning's window. Perhaps we will smuggle out
lots of crackers, etc, from Friday night's dinner....
More tomorrow on the logistics of the launch call.
-K
click for larger image
Previous Update
|
