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#