Day 4, 3/29/09 -- too tired to think of a clever title

Today Jeff and I got into the high bay a little later than usual -- the FIREBall team wanted some time with the lights out so they could do some sort of alignment of their optical system. Milligan went ahead with the Columbia crew a little earlier.

Jeff and I continued with our alignment of the field lens, and got it to within spec. From that point we re-assembled the rest of the optics stack and its RF shielding. After flipping the cryostat and removing the coldplate, we discovered a little snafu with some of the sensor wires running up to the stack so we had to replace a couple of sensors, but it was smooth sailing after that. Tomorrow we plan on installing fridges on the coldplate and Jeff is going to do some tests with his half-wave plate system.

Because the FIREBall crew wanted to shut the lights out again, so we planned on taking a bike ride out to the grocery store around lunchtime so they could shut off the lights. It turns out that on Sundays, the Fort Sumner grocery store doesn't open until the afternoon -- and none of the restaurants are open either. On the way back, I got fed up with the slow pace of the rest of the group...so I turned on the jets and rode as hard as I could back to the high bay. Turns out, this was a terrible idea because I'm not nearly in as good shape as I had hoped.

One of the fun things we found today was the owl hanging out in the CSBF hangar building (where the launch vehicles are kept). We spent a good 15 minutes or so trying to get a decent picture.

Later, before we left for the night, I found the hatch to the roof of the high bay. I got a few pictures but I'll need to take a tripod up to get some decent ones.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico032909#