Day 67, 5/31/09 -- Launch attempt 1, scrubbed

Well, after all that, no launch. After bringing the gondola inside, we went home to get some sleep.

We came back for the weather briefing, and the winds have REALLY picked up for FIREBall -- they would only have gotten 4 hours of night-time flight at float, so again they decided to pass on the launch opportunity. This means we get to do the whole thing again tomorrow morning!

Luckily, some of the things that we did yesterday on the hardware end don't need to be done again, so we'll save some time. Right now we're going through our pre-flight checklist again and then heading home to get some sleep.

Pictures from today's launch attempt:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico053109#

May 31st launch attempt -- live-blogging

0115 hours local time:
We convened at the high bay at about 0030 h for the final pre-launch prep. Will and Amber ran a quick scan test and we've started closing up the access panels and getting ready to roll out. Mark and Bill from CSBF came by to tell us that there are a few more showers in the area and they're going to watch the situation. Right now we're getting ready to push the gondola back towards the door and hook the gondola up to Big Bill to lift out. If we get the go-ahead from the weather people, we'll, uh, go ahead.

0145h local:
I just went up with Mark from CSBF to get the gondola hooked up to Big Bill for roll-out. We're standing by pending good news on the weather.

0252h local:
We are outside the building and the baffles are opened and the braces installed. We are basically ready to roll out to the launch pad.

0304h local:
Mirror cover is off. CSBF is attaching ballast hoppers and crush pads.

0331h local:
Crush pads and ballast hoppers are on. The CSBF electronics crew is finalizing the routing of their cables and antennas. They've already updated the GPS tracking webpage for us!
http://towerfts.csbf.nasa.gov/GoogleMaps/ConvGps.htm

0400h local:
The weather guys have told us there's a slight possibility of light showers in the area, so we've covered up some sensitive things and we're going to wait and see what happens.

0405h local:
Just found out that Jerry is posting video clips in near-real time to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/grapesmoker1

0430h local:
Weather is looking good. Still waiting for official word.

0454h local:
They've driven out the balloon vehicle and have launched a pilot balloon ("pi ball") that's used to gauge the wind speeds. This is a good sign.

0505h local:
Rolling out to the pad!

0557h local:
Mechanical work on gondola done. Sun has risen. They're laying out the flight train now. Looking good! We're going through our pre-flight checklist.

0626h local:
Pre-flight checklist done -- we're hands-off the experiment now. The balloon is still in its crate; they're waiting for the low-level (~1000ft above ground level) winds to stabilize.

0700h local:
Launch scrubbed. The low-level winds ended up lining up fine, but by that time the surface winds had picked up and it was a no-go. Maybe tomorrow.

Day 66, 5/30/09 -- BREAKING NEWS: EBEX launch attempt tomorrow, Sunday May 31!

At today's weather briefing we got the prognosis for a decent ~12 hr. flight. FIREBall's flight profile would have put them at 111,000 feet for most of the night, which they decided was too low for them so the opportunity fell to us and we took it.

Right now we are going through the first stages of our pre-flight checklist before we head home to try and get some rest. We have to be back by 1AM so CSBF can take us out.

More updates as they become available.

Day 65, 5/29/09 -- The ennui of readiness

I'm going to just come out and say it: Today was boring. And that is precisely what makes it so fantastic. People were, for the most part, just either doing nothing (like me...well, I was reading a book) or doing very minor work. Today's flight sim went smoothly. Not perfect, but well-enough.

We're ready.

It looks like the downrange weather is getting a little better, so it's likely that FIREBall will take the next launch opportunity.

Various people have left: Ilan and Dan have both left for Minneapolis earlier (Ilan a few days ago, Dan yesterday). Shaul left today to spend the weekend at home as well. All are planning to be back soon-ish.

Because so many UMN people have left at different times, we've been experiencing a serious shortage of cars. Shaul arranged for us to rent a couple of cars from Clovis, so Britt, Michele, Jeff, and I drove out there. Jeff and I drove the new rentals back (a red Chevy Cobalt and a white Mazda3) while Britt and Michele ran some errands and procured Thai food for the rest of the group. After our flight sim, we went back to Britt, Michele, and Will's rental house, ate the Thai food, and watched Ghost Town using our LCD projector and a white sheet for a screen. It was a nice, relaxing evening after a nice, relaxing day at the high bay.

No pictures today; sorry Daniel's mom.

Day 64, 5/28/09 -- I'm waiting for the day

Today was a pretty relaxed day. Britt fixed the issue with the ACS card not reading correctly (burnt regulator), Will did a lot of tests of the motor control box, Jeff and I filled liquid helium, and I cycled the fridges.

We're still not flying. We still have thunderstorms off to our west which will bring our altitude down significantly overnight. The meteorologists tell us this weather pattern is starting to clear out, and will be improved by Sunday. Until then...pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052809#

Day 63, 5/27/09 -- The waiting is the hardest part

Well, we're basically ready. Sure, one ACS card is reading funny temperatures, and there are some lingering issues with the rotator, but these are all pretty minor.

The real holdup is the weather. Darn monsoon pattern over AZ is screwing us over every day. So, we wait. And wait. And...well, you get the picture.

We did see a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor today. It circled around and landed and took off from the runway at the airport four or five times. It was neat.

Pictures (all Osprey):
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052709

Day 62, 5/26/09 -- Things are looking up

After yesterday's horrible day, today was much better. Britt and Michele finished the last of the mechanical work on the gondola in the morning. Jeff, Milligan, and I rolled in around 10. Jeff and I filled cryogens, then Will and the ACS team did a few scan tests.

At today's weather briefing, we got more bad news: The same monsoon-like weather pattern that's been sitting over western NM and eastern AZ shows very little sign of dissipating, so the projected flights for the next few days look pretty crappy. For us, we would droop down to 72,000 feet at night, at which point everything gets much colder and there's a strong possibility that we wouldn't be able to point the telescope due to the strong winds. So...we wait.

Weather aside, the experiment is mostly ready now. There are some software crashes that are being investigated but don't necessarily kill us, and an ACS card stopped reading out its analog channels so it needs to be replaced with its spare, but otherwise...we're ready.

We also got a new lift delivered to replace the one that broke. The new one is a JLG E400AJP -- and it goes a full 10 feet higher than the one we had. It's pretty sweet. It is a foot and a half wider than the old one, but that should still be ok.

The team took an early night off tonight. There were plans to go to Clovis, but I think due to the thunderstorms in the area it didn't happen. Tomorrow: another flight sim.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInFlight052609#

Commenting

I just now realized that the Blogger settings were configured to only allow comments from registered users. I've now disabled that -- so comment away, previously silenced masses!

Better late than never, right?

Day 61, 5/25/09 -- When it rains, it pours.

This has been a taxing week for the EBEX crew. 2 of our 6 gyros failed; that manufacturer was not at all sypathetic to our plight and we ended up reconfiguring our system to use 4 gyros instead of 6. Then we had our issues with the pivot, which required rebuilding the bearing assembly. Last night the cherry picker broke, and the fix was only semi-usable. And remember when our GPS unit broke about 2 weeks ago? This morning, CSBF took us outside to calibrate our repaired GPS unit...and it's somehow broken again!

To add insult to injury, the wind shifted direction and picked up speed while we were outside, so we ended up facing directly into the wind with not-very-well braced baffle ears (they were folded in to minimize their cross section, which eliminates the bracing that stabilizes them). The zip ties that were holding the ears in place failed, and each ear in turn swung backwards 180 degrees -- keep in mind that they're only designed to fold out 45 degrees. The resulting carnage was an impressively twisted bit of baffle support structure and smashed foam.

The rest of the day was devoted to fixing the damage caused by the wind in the morning, basically putting us a day behind where we wanted to be. I was so dejected I didn't take any pictures of the damage, but Dan got a few pictures after everything was mostly fixed.

On the bright side, NASA is loaning us one of their GPS units for the flight, and it looks like we might be getting a new cherry picker tomorrow. On the downside, the flight weather looks pretty bad for the next few days at least, and our flight computer keeps crashing every few hours.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052509#

Day 60, 5/24/09 -- Working pivot, broken cherry picker

Well, the title basically sums up the entire state of affairs in the high bay today. Will did some pivot tests today and everything is basically working fine.

The big failure of today (because there's always one, right?) was of our cherry picker, a JLG E300AJP boom lift. After Will used it to do some pivot motor diagnostics, it basically just...stopped working. While in the middle of the high bay doorway. We spent a few hours poking around, trying to figure out what was going on, noticing a flashing error code on the unit, trying to find a service manual, etc., etc. We ended up calling United Rentals, from whence we rented the unit, and they actually had a guy drive out to Fort Sumner....from Santa Fe. On a Sunday night. On Memorial Day weekend.

He showed up at about 10PM, poked around a little, plugged in a diagnostic tool into the port in the lift, and poked around a little more. Eventually he got it to go out the door, but it now only goes in one direction, with one speed (FAST), and it doesn't stop. This, as you might imagine, is less than useful. It remains to be seen how we can work around not having this lift -- it basically gets used every day for at least an hour, if not more. It's going to be difficult to have to use a less-flexible lifting system.

In other news, we had another flight simulation at the end of the day. Unlike last time, it was NOT a total disaster, though it was by no means perfect. Still, we're getting there.

Pictures for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052409#

Day 59, 5/23/09 -- The rebirth of the rotator

We were planning on doing another flight sim today, but instead the entire crew was focused on figuring out the funny business with our rotator/pivot. It seems that the problems we were seeing yesterday got worse overnight -- the pivot wouldn't even make the gondola move even if we hit it with all the current we have available. After doing some tests, we determined there was too much friction in the bearings, so we brought the rotator down.

After it was disassembled, we (meaning Michele, Seth, and Britt) found bearings clogged with...all sorts of crap. Some of the rollers (they're tapered roller bearings, for whatever that's worth) were clogged with the accumulated schmutz of 2 months in the high bay. After cleaning and regreasing the bearings, the pivot was reassembled, remounted, and once again the gondola spins freely! As the kids say, "w00t!".

On the software front, it seems that we are now in a stable software state, free of (excessive) crashing and ready for flight. SWEET.

While all the hard work was being done on the rotator, a few of us (myself, Jeff, Dan, Ilan, and Kate, joined by Joy and Daniel later) went to Clovis for some R&R. We had dinner at a Thai (plus Chinese and Japanese!) restaurant that was suprisingly good and then headed to Kelley's, an Irish pub in the heart of Clovis that Dan mentioned was a popular hangout for Air Force guys from nearby Cannon AFB. Good times were had by all.

Today, I took more pictures, because apparently Daniel's mom complained that I wasn't taking enough pictures. So these ones are for you, Daniel's mom.
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052309#

Day 58, 5/22/09 -- Flight simulation, take 1.

Today we had our first attempt at a flight simulation. It was, predictably, a complete disaster. Besides the detector power accidentally being shut off and losing all of our detectors, the azimuth motors have been exhibiting funny behavior that we spent the rest of the day looking into. And the detector power going out also screwed up the commanding for our half-wave-plate system.

On the bright side, after the detector power outage, it only took about a half hour to get them all back, which I think is a record for us.

Milligan, Hannes, and Joy flew out to Winslow, AZ where CSBF has their 'downrange station' set up for line-of-sight telemetry when payloads get out of range of Ft. Sumner. They set up a couple computers there along with the downlink hardware and made sure that everything worked before flying back. Bonus points for anyone who can name the famous song that mentions Winslow, AZ.

There's a possibility we'll fly on Sunday morning. Stay tuned...

No pictures today (what can I say, most everything just looks the same).

Day 57, 5/21/09 -- Crashing code make Hulk AAAAANGRY

Well, the gondola team tried to do scan tests outdoors last night but were stymied by a consistently crashing computer. Turns out that all of the changes people have been making to the flight control code have made it...break. As of today, we have instituted a new code policy so that no non-essential changes are made, all changes are made on a case-by-case basis to determine essential-ness(?), and changes are only made by two people: Milligan and Will, who are the most familiar with the code. By reverting to an old version of the code, it seems that we now once again have working flight computers.

A corollary is that hardware changes are also to be kept to a minimum. We have reached a point where making changes has the potential to do more harm than good.

As such, there's little for a hardware guy like me to do...so I did basically nothing today. Jeff made some structural improvements to some baffling and made a foam cover for the mirror. The detector crew did some noise tests this morning outdoors and everything looks pretty good.

Now, we wait. Depending on the weather, there might be a flight opportunity tomorrow and possibly on Sunday as well. FIREBall gets dibs, though, so if they want it, they get it.

NCT was found perched precariously on the slope of a ravine where they have to get it out by helicopter. The recovery team is surely working hard on getting it home safely.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052109#

Day 56, 5/20/09 -- Rain, rain, go away

Today, after the morning's tests were finished, Britt spent a lot of time routing and tying up cables on the gondola. This is, quite frankly, an annoying, frustrating, and often thankless task, but Britt took it on anyway.

The weather for a launch in the next few days looks pretty iffy. It's not so much the conditions in Fort Sumner, which are reasonable, but the thunderstorms to the west of us that would bring down the balloon altitude significantly. It's unlikely that a flight over these conditions would meet either our or FIREBall's flight requirements. There's a possible launch opportunity on Friday morning, and again possibly on Sunday.

Jeff and I cut a hole in the baffling to allow access to the cryostat so we can fill without removing the whole rear baffle. Even so, filling the cryostat's LN2 tank now easily takes twice as long as it did without the baffle, and probably 5 times as long as when the cryostat was on its cart. Still, it beats having to remove the baffle.

The gondola is going out again tonight for pointing and scanning tests, but there's no strong need for myself or Jeff to be there so we left early. The detector crew is planning on doing some noise tests during the latter part of tonight's outdoor adventure.

No pictures today.

Day 55, 5/19/09 -- EBEX in Flight, late edition

We took EBEX outside again last night in order to do far-sidelobe testing. In order to do that, we had to finalize ALL of the baffling -- a time consuming task since some had been removed in order to fix some electronics. We got the baffling done around 1AM, the ACS team did some pointing tests for about an hour and a half, and then we were picked up and taken outside at about 2:30AM.

After going outside, we were set down on the ground and the baffles were set in their flight position (they have to be folded in order to get out the high bay door). Jeff and I left at about 4:30 AM while a smaller subset of the team stayed to do the far sidelobe tests. Initial indications look good -- no far sidelobe features at the roughly -90 dB level, which was about the noise floor of the measurement.

In the morning after being brought back in, CSBF weighed us for our official flight weight: 5925 lbs! That's 75 lbs LESS than we had been hoping for. That means we can carry a little bit more ballast and thus hopefully avoid drooping down too far at night.




















Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051909#

Day 54, 5/18/09 -- Loose ends

Most of today was spent doing miscellaneous things on the gondola. The ACS crew investigated the oddness with the gyros and are reverting back to an old, less-redundant configuration since two out of our six gyros are wonky.

Jeff did some work on the baffles, covering some seams, and I did some work on the cryostat. Seth from Columbia fixed an issue which we were having with our disk pressure vessels and flight control program, and Milligan has fixed our detector algorithm manager so Hannes and François were able to get detectors tuned today in about a half an hour rather than half a day. All in all, good progress all around.

Tonight, the pointing team is going outside to attempt some scan tests.

NCT, which launched yesterday, managed to get a 37 hour flight! They would have terminated earlier, but they were over inhospitable terrain so it was delayed for quite a while. 37 hours might be a record for a flight from Fort Sumner. I found out today that Eric from the NCT team has a blog up at http://goneballooning.wordpress.com/.

No pictures from today, but Milligan gave me some nice panoramas from the NCT launch yesterday which I put up in the NCT launch album at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/NCTLaunch#

Day 53, 5/17/09 -- NCT launched!

The big news today is that NCT launched this morning! While their flight forecast was only a little better than what they had yesterday, they decided to go ahead -- and it's a good thing they did, because it's turning out to be a great flight! Even now, 18 hours after launch, they're still at float and it looks like they have plenty of room to keep going.

Today I worked on the last piece of baffling for the top of the cryostat, Jeff worked on installing a heater on the half-wave-plate drive motor, and the ACS crew tried to debug some faulty gyro readings. The detector crew has made good progress on getting the algorithms working so we'll be in good shape for the flight. Ilan cycled our sub-Kelvin refrigerators so we can do more detector/noise tests tomorrow.

We took the evening off and had dinner at the so-called "lake house", where Hannes, François, Ilan, and Dan are staying. We had a nice relaxing dinner, and some of us went into the lake. A few of us, myself included, went swimming at about midnight and were treated to both cold water as well as an amazing night sky.

All of my pictures today are of the NCT launch and flight:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/NCTLaunch#

Day 52, 5/16/09 -- Almost.

Today Jeff and I did more work on the baffles, fixing up the minor damage from the winds during compatibility testing and improving the structure a bit. The big news today, though, was the weather: Tomorrow morning looks like an excellent opportunity for a launch. The problem, however, is that the projected flight track would take any payload launched close to the Mexico border, and they are required to terminate if the payload gets within 50 miles of the border. Even a minor deviation from the projected path would require an early termination and thus a short flight -- perhaps only 10-12 hours instead of the 24 that every group here is hoping for.

For FIREBall, this is definitely a no-go: They can only observe at night, and CSBF only launches payloads from Fort Sumner in the mornings -- if they only got a 10 hour flight, they wouldn't get any data at all. The NCT crew also would like to get some post-sunset flight time so they can test their systems for their eventual long-duration flight from Australia which, unlike an Antarctic long-duration-flight, has to go through sunsets. For us, the flight didn't meet our minimum requirements for the science we wanted to do.

In the end, it was decided that there would be an NCT launch attempt tomorrow if the projected flight track improves as we get weather data closer to flight. We'll see how it goes.

Also, I got a package of delicious date bars from a friend in Minneapolis! They were a big hit with the rest of the crew here too.

No pictures today.

Day 51, 5/15/09 -- Compatibility: Achieved. Rest: Pending.

As expected, the FIREBall launch was scrubbed due to high low-level (~500ft above ground) winds. We arrived at 4AM anticipating this so we could prepare for our compatibility test with the NASA electronics. This would be the first major test of the enormous baffles that we put on earlier -- would they survive, even with these relatively low winds? Stay tuned...

Ok, they survived. At some points the winds started gusting up to almost 20 knots, I believe -- worse than typical launch conditions -- and the baffles, perhaps amazingly, didn't completely fall apart. Some mylar peeled off, but nothing that will be too difficult to fix.

More importantly, our electronics passed the compatibility test! We should be flight-ready in a couple of days -- then, we wait for FIREBall and NCT to launch. The next launch window looks to be Sunday morning.

Last, Amber and Seth arrived from Columbia this morning -- with authentic New York bagels in hand! The ACS and bolometer crews had more work to do today, so Jeff and I filled liquid helium in the cryostat and then left around 11AM. We're going to try and get some rest to recover from the past few days of work.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051509#

Day 50, 5/14/09 -- Compatibility looms

We ended up not doing compatibility today -- we got behind schedule and the winds were going to get too strong before we finished, so we had to delay.

FIREBall has their first launch attempt tomorrow, but the conditions are pretty marginal. If they scrub, we're going to do compatibility in the morning -- at 5AM. We have to show up at 4AM. Sweet.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051409#

Day 49, 5/13/09 -- Death by a thousand aluminum tape cuts

Busy day, getting ready for compatibility test tomorrow. Too tired to write a full post.

I added some pictures from Milligan in the albums for the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th, and 13th. His pictures are at the end of those albums.

Pictures for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051309#

Day 48, 5/12/09 -- EBEX: We know drama

Today was full of dramatic moments. Before we get to the drama, though, Science: We got the majority of the remaining baffles up -- a big task that had been delayed for a good while because others were doing things with the gondola. We test-fitted our window baffle, the so-called "champagne bucket". Ilan, Hannes, and François worked on fixing some issues with our readout crates. Jeff did a lot of work on baffle supports. I cut some holes in foam and painted some sun-exposed metal on the gondola. And new people showed up: Greg from Brown, Sam from SISSA, Chaoyun and Kate from Minnesota, and Joy returned from a weekend with her parents. As if the high bay weren't crowded enough!

Now for the drama:

First, Governor Bill Richardson flew in to Fort Sumner. We have no idea why, but he landed in a small business jet, and what I think is the town's entire police force -- three cars -- came out to escort him to wherever he was going.

Second, our elevation actuator was replaced with our flight unit. Now, this normally doesn't sound very dramatic, and it shouldn't be. Unfortunately, the person who replaced the actuator forgot to remove the strap that was holding the inner frame in place while the actuator was removed. Now, I was not aware that there was a ratchet strap in place. Hilarity ensues: I move the actuator, and eventually the strap fails with a rather spectacular-sounding BANG, causing all work in the high bay to stop and everyone to gather around to find out what happened. Turns out the steel hook on the end of the strap bent considerably before the webbing itself failed, but nothing ended up damaged in the end.

Last, while painting some metal high up on the gondola, some paint was accidentally spilled onto the gondola below...and into the open ACS crate and its three ~$5000-each electronics boards. After this was discovered, there was a frantic effort to clean up the boards with isopropanol as much as possible. Still waiting to see if all's well...

EDIT: First indications are that the ACS is working.

Actually a fair number of pictures of me today, thanks to Dan who took a whole bunch while I was working:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051209#

Day 47, 5/11/09 -- If it's not deadly, you're not trying hard enough

Today was a busy day:

- The Mini-SIP, the NASA electronics package, was installed
- Jeff and Dan nearly finished the primary mirror 'scoop' baffles, and now it looks even bigger than before.
- Ilan and Shaul found a wiring issue with our LED calibrator, and we're trying to devise a workaround
- I prepared some of our outer baffles for a test fit tomorrow and got our 'champagne bucket' window baffle ready for a test fit
- Shaul modified our low-temperature readout boards for better linearity
- Late last night, Will did tests and settled on the final configuration for our garage door springs -- which I now have pictures of!

But the big news is that we are rapidly approaching 'turnaround' high-altitude wind conditions. The NASA crew have started doing flight projections for FIREBall, since they will likely be up first. Right now we are aiming to do our compatibility test on Thursday if the weather is reasonable and declare our flight readiness on Friday. As such, the next few days the posting may be a little light.

We also saw some more local fauna today -- a little frog and a big spider. Check 'em out in the pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051109#

Day 46, 5/10/09 -- To boldly go...

Today, Hannes, Dan, and Shaul finished up the last suite of optical/polarimetry calibration tests that need to be done! That means tomorrow, Jeff and I start work on getting the remaining baffles in place. It also means that, today, I had nothing to do. Shaul suggested I go to Clovis, about 60 miles away, so...I did, and saw the new Star Trek movie. I believe it's summarized most succinctly as: This movie is awesome. Go see it. You can thank me later.

When I got back, Daniel wanted me to take some photos of him rockin' his new cowboy hat and mustache, so I happily obliged.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico051009#

Day 45, 5/9/09 -- More testing

Today was (and is still) devoted to optical/detector tests. Dan, Hannes, and Shaul are working hard on getting polarization rotation data across our focal plane.

In the meantime, things are breaking. Our GPS system has some sort of burned component inside and one of the receivers no longer works. And the analog channels of our so-called "general housekeeping" boards continue to be problematic.

My solution to our gondola balance issue, a set of garage door extension springs, seems to be working -- in fact, working a little too well! Before, our inner frame wanted to tip forward of its own accord; now, the springs are pulling up on the inner frame. We'll eventually find the sweet spot.

Because the gondola was being used today for optical tests, we couldn't do any more work on baffles. Jeff and I are planning on installing more baffles tomorrow, so we did some prep work for that today.

Not much more to report from here. No pictures today, but I have to remember to get a set of pictures of the garage door springs.

Day 44, 5/8/09 -- An angel gets its wings

Jeff and I (along with occasional help from others) put the big sunshade baffle ears up. They're big. And shiny. And threaten to fall over if you look at them wrong. Launch should be fun.

I also had pretty much the most terrifying half hour of my life, standing/kneeling/crawling on top of the gondola drilling holes to attach one of the support bars for the aforementioned sunshade ears. Sure, I was in a safety harness and was clipped in, but I really didn't want to slip.

Other people did stuff today, but, honestly, it wasn't ginormous foam-and-mylar ears, so it's really not that important. Also, Shaul showed up again. Now he's here permanently until the end of the campaign.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050809#

Day 43, 5/7/09 -- Outdoor tests redux

Last night's outdoor pointing system test was kind of a bust -- we got hosed by GPS problems and an arcane, undocumented convention in our flight scheduling code (inherited from another experiment), which meant the entire night was a confusing mess. Luckily, the weather is good tonight as well, so the ACS team is staying and NASA is taking us out once again for full system tests.

We were going to try to observe the moon with the millimeter-wave receiver, but that got shelved due to a programming glitch which caused the power to the bolometer readout to be accidentally shut off. It would have taken Hannes and François quite a bit of time to get the system back up and running again, so we decided to shelve that for the night and let the ACS team have the gondola for themselves the whole evening.

Jeff and I worked on getting the largest pieces of baffling ready to install, but we ran out of time and wouldn't have been able to get the pieces up before the ACS team needed the gondola.

We did see a cool lizard today -- looks like a Texas Horned Lizard. All three of today's pictures are of the lizard:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050709#

Day 42, 5/6/09 -- 40 days in the wilderness, now with snakes and explosions!

Well, today certainly was an exciting day. Early in the day, Jeff saw a snake in the high bay. I thought it was cute, but it freaked Jeff out a bit. He started looking up snakes to try and figure out if it was poisonous but had no luck. Maybe one of my readers knows?

FIREBall had their compatibility test today, where CSBF makes sure that none of the science equipment interferes with their stuff. They will probably declare their flight readiness in a day or two.
During their compatibility test, we heard (and felt) a big BOOM -- it turns out that one of the FIREBall guys was hooking up some batteries from CREST and accidentally shorted them. The battery box started hissing, so he took it outside and set it on the ground where it exploded in spectacular fashion. There were pieces of the box and cells from the battery distributed over 200 feet apart. Luckily no one was hurt and no equipment was damaged.

Tonight was also the first clear night we've had in a while, so both us and FIREBall went outside to hang anddo some tests (for us, mostly pointing-related). I just got home at about 4AM, but some of the crew is still there.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050609#

Day 41, 5/5/09 -- "It's like, 'how much more black could it be?'"

The answer is...some.

First, the big news today was that CREST finally launched! I didn't get up to watch, but some of the team members who were either still around or came in early got to see it. They launched around 8AM, drifted eastward while ascending toward Portales, and then started drifting westward when it got to its float altitude of about 130,000 feet. In fact, it basically drifted back toward Fort Sumner, at one point getting as close as 9 nautical miles (on the ground) to us, putting it about 27 (non-nautical) miles away line-of-sight. It was REALLY easy to see in the sky, and I put my mom's nice zoom lens to good use (see picture above). You can actually just make out the payload as a little white smudge below the balloon. They terminated just north of Roswell and it looks like they recovered the payload in the evening. Flight (and recovery?) track here -- it'll probably be gone by the time the next payload launches, though.

Ilan was in early to cycle our fridges and get detectors cold again so we can start the next round of detector/optical tests. Jeff and I implemented my awesome garage-door-spring solution to our inner frame balance issue and...well...it didn't completely work. It helped, but we need bigger springs. And I forgot to take pictures. Dan spent the day working on getting the artificial planet set up with his monachromator for the next round of tests while Hannes and François battled buggy code while trying to tune bolometers.

After dinner, we weighed the gondola: 5800 lbs with all batteries and an extra 50 or so lbs of power supplies but without about 100 lbs of baffles. Still, in pretty good shape since we thought we might be significantly over 6000 lbs. Then Jeff and I started applying millimeter-wave absorber to the optics 'cavity' around the cryostat and secondary mirror to control reflections. It's black, and we have a bit more to put on around the secondary and a lot more to put on around the primary, hence the answer that opened the post.

Also, this is my 50th post to this blog. To the nearly 200 unique visitors this site has had -- thanks! I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed posting.

CREST pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/CREST#

Today's EBEX pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050509#

Day 40, 5/04/09 -- Somewhat baffled

After the last fridge cycle ran out late last night, we dedicated all of today to doing work that couldn't happen when other tests were going on. Besides various electronics and software tests, the big change is that we have some of the inner frame baffles in! It looks...sort of ridiculous, but in an awesome way. I'll just let the picture do the talking:
On a side note, it happens fairly frequently that I come home with random bits of hardware in my pocket -- usually things like screws, nuts, washers, or the like. Today is the first time ever that I've gotten home with pop rivets in my pocket.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050409#

Day 39, 5/3/09 -- "Layers of deception"

Thus spake Dan, whilst describing the data pouring in on our computer screens. Dan and Hannes have been working all day on doing artificial planet scans but were stymied by drifting pointing sensors making them think they were pointed at the source but when in reality they weren't. Such is life when you're indoors with no reliable absolute pointing sensors. Will showed some plots of maps made from the previous day's scans and they looked terrible -- but that's probably at least partially due to the aforementioned pointing drift issue, which smears the maps out.

Jeff and I finished up most of the foam for the baffles today. I also made some snazzy sheet metal baffle supports, and I have to say, working with sheet metal is great for instant gratification. Unlike machining, which takes a lot of time as you remove metal and the piece slowly comes to shape, with sheet metal things move much more quickly: One step on the shear -- KACHUNK -- and you've cut a piece off. 10 seconds in the brake and you've bent a 90-degree angle. It's a lot of fun.

Michele took a much needed day off in Albuquerque starting yesterday afternoon, and came back in the late afternoon today. Also, CREST is planning launch attempts tomorrow morning and Tuesday morning if tomorrow doesn't work out. I probably won't bother to get up, though, because at this point sleep is more important than watching a launch at 7AM.

No pictures today. Everything looks pretty much the same as it did yesterday.

Day 38, 5/2/09 -- system tests underway

The astute reader will notice that I've stopped giving weather updates. That's because it's mostly always the same -- sunny, warm, and windy. Today, however, it was actually cloudy and it even rained a bit. Even so, we actually got to play some 3-on-3 basketball with the help of Daniel, a Berkeley grad student working on NCT, and they were our best basketball games yet.

Now that the telescope has both mirrors on, we can actually, you know, make sure it works. Actually, even last night, shortly after I left, I found out via a Facebook status update that the telescope was actually able to see our 'artificial planet' and they were taking data to make beam maps. Awesome.

That work continued today, while Will worked on code to actually produce a beam map from previously-taken data. Our elevation drive developed an odd pathology where every so often it would cease to work until someone tapped on the motor lightly. I surmised that the problem was excess brush wear: The motor has high-altitude brushes, which are softer than normal brushes so they arc less (and thus also produce less RF -- bonus!) but wear much more quickly. After I tweaked the brush springs a little bit, it seems that the problem has been fixed.

Jeff spent all day today working on baffles, helped out today by Jerry. They've gotten a LOT done. Almost all of the foam is cut, and they're now well into the process of covering the baffles with aluminized mylar.

I've still been feeling the effects of lack of sleep, with nearly-constant low-grade headaches for the past few days. Today, I went home early and made myself dinner for which I had bought stuff for earlier in the week but hadn't had a chance to make -- a ribeye steak, a potato gratin (sort-of), and a salad. And now, I'm going to bed.

Updates to yesterday's albums, including pictures from Milligan who took lots of pictures while I was busy helping with the secondary mirror install
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050109#

Today's pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050209#

Day 37, 5/1/09 -- a fully operational battle station.

In short: We have a telescope!

For the second day in a row, the CREST launch attempt was scrubbed due to high mid-altitude winds. The weather's going to be pretty bad for the next few days, so probably no more launch attempts for a while.

After fighting a bit with the mirror alignment procedure, Shaul, Britt, and I managed to get the primary mirror mount aligned. In parallel, Dan and Michele worked on getting the artificial planet mounted.

Jeff worked for most of the day on getting foam cut for the baffles. I took a little trip to Clovis to get some supplies for the balance-weight-reduction mechanism (i.e. big-ass springs). I also went to Lowe's for some other supplies for the baffles and brought pizza back for the lab crew.

Once I got back, Britt, Michele and I, with the help of Joy operating the crane, mounted the secondary mirror. We had to fight with it a bit in order to get it on -- a redesign of the mirror mount produced some interference with the secondary mirror's stiffening ribs, meaning I got to take an angle grinder to the backside of our $100,000 secondary mirror. Twice. No biggie.

We already knew from our Nevis experience that putting the primary mirror on is actually much easier, so I took a little break and when I got back, the mirror was on! Dan and Michele then started the process of aligning the artificial planet beam with the EBEX telescope beam, guided by a "laser". This was nearly 11PM, and I went home.

Unfortunately I don't have all of my pictures from today because I left the DSLR's memory card and card reader in the lab (usually I copy the files over before coming home). You'll just have to make do until tomorrow with the few I took with my little Canon ELPH:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico050109#