After putting the gondola together, we spent some time preparing for electrical integration with the cryostat. Mostly this took the form of a "solder party" in which we made cables for several days. There are some other random bits too. These photos sat on my computer for a little while before I got around to posting them. […]
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I’ve taken a little while off posting because I was travelling home, and then catching up on much missed sleep. But I have a few last photos to sign off with: some innards of the magnetometer and sun sensors, plus a couple more from the enigmatic "building" 16. And while I’m done posting for this campaign, there may be some posts coming up from the brave team that stayed behind. […] Yesterday we put the cold cryostat and everything back on the gondola, in an attempt to have a fully complete instrument for Friday. Because I’m leaving soon, I also decided to do some exploring. […] Yesterday BLAST went outside to test things that don’t work inside: sun sensors, GPS, and telemetry. Notably, this required Tiny Tim—everybody’s favourite behemoth of a launch vehicle. […] Yesterday we were doing lots of the little things we need to do before taking the gondola outside. Since the "we" doing lots of stuff occasionally includes "me", I can’t always be taking photographs of everything. So, most of what I have is from the first of the (third round of) liquid helium fills in the morning. […] Yesterday Elio, Barth, and I did some arts and crafts, preparing the solar panel mounts for use. In the evening we had a big barbecue with the EBEX folks, but I was too busy grilling to take photos. You can find one picture on twitter @BLASTPol […] Because Enzo was leaving yesterday (or, rather, early today), we all went to the pub. During the day CSBF test fit their solar panels, which mainly involved loudly squealing with a hand drill while the mounts were modified. And Kyle test fit the new pinhole sun sensor mounts. Finally, like on all clear nights, Natalie and Laura were pointing the telescope and testing the star cameras. […] I didn’t take many pictures yesterday, but I have saved a few non-cryogenic pictures from the cryostat-opening day earlier in the week. They’re mostly of Barth fixing biphase transmitter bugs, and of Enzo teaching Tristan the recipe he’s been using to make bread in the mornings. […] |
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With Hurricane Sandy over, the truck finally managed to arrive from Toronto with all the Spider gondola bits. After a day of work with the team here, we had a gondola again. […]
On Wednesday morning Spider was a fully functional balloon gondola. By Thursday night it was a collection of pieces packed into a couple crates, and a series of tubes. Jamil, Juan, Natalie, and I wroked furiously in between to effect the transition. By next week, these pieces will hopefully have found their way to Princeton, where they will be integrated with the flight cryostat and detector systems (which will replace the shipping container being used as inner frame). […]