Day 51, December 14, 2012 -- Compatibility looms

Today's big task on the gondola was getting our solar arrays mounted. I had to stay up late last night to check up on our fridge cycle after we had some CANBus problems late yesterday, so I didn't get to the high bay until around 11AM, at which point the first of our two large arrays was already installed. The second was installed by mid-afternoon.

During the day, part of the team did a flight simulation, going over the various aspects of our pre-flight, launch, ascent, and at-float strategies. During part of this, we found an issue with the HWP and we eventually realized that we can't get it spinning at the absolute lowest elevation angle the gondola can point to. This isn't a problem, since we never actually point that low during flight, and we can always just start higher and go down, but it and a coincident readout software issue definitely stressed Jeff out a bit in the afternoon.

I left the high bay around 6PM because I needed to make sure I ate dinner and did laundry so I would be well-rested for our planned compatibility test tomorrow while most of the rest of the team stayed to finish the flight simulation and do a few more mechanical things on the gondola to get ready.

Pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104253244018605213307/EBEXInAntarctica20121214