BLASTpol and Preliminary ACS

The beginnings of an attitude control system have been integrated with BLASTpol. I’ve been working with Natalie on getting gyroscope readout working and Laura has been working in parallel with the help of Pedro to enable us to command the motors.

Mostly, I took these because Giles requested photos of the gondola, and I didn’t […]

Joints Arrive!

The remainder of the Spider joints arrived today from the multi-axis (6-axis?) machining place.

A few of the simpler joints have already been made by the Toronto shop. See these two old posts.

Star Camera

Unlike the last two, this post is not long-delayed. On Thursday Natalie was assembling the Spider star camera to get a picture of it for her thesis proposal. As a side benefit, I also get pictures of it. And I (among others) get an assembled star camera. I think this is my first post for […]

SIP Cage

Another overdue post that I just got pictures for today: the SIP cage. Juan designed this cage, which lives at the base of Spider, to hold NASA’s SIP (Standard Instrument Package?), and also to support the reaction wheel.

When these photos were taken (almost a month ago) many parts were just tack welded. Now, welding […]

Barth Making Cables (!)

A few weeks ago, Barth was actually making cables (for me!). I took a few pictures as proof that it actually happened. Only one turned out well, so I’ve also included a great picture Juan took of Natalie’s solar head bobbing thing.

The 50cm jumper/adapter cable Barth made contains about $200 of parts. I still […]

DAS Pictures

So there were a pile of pictures of the DAS (Data Acquisition System) and BLASTbus electronics on my personal camera that I’ve finally gotten around to uploading. There are a lot more than these few I’ve posted, but others probably don’t find them as interesting as I do. I’m biased because I’ve been working on […]

Computer, Magneto-Spear, Solar Cells

So I haven’t written a post for a while, but that’s only because nothing particularly interesting has happened for a while. (That and because there’s some old pictures sitting unloved and unuploaded on my other camera at home.) But interesting stuff is starting to happen again, and this is the beginnings of it.

First we […]

BLAST Pivot Assembly

The BLAST pivot completed assembly this morning. It never gets disassembled, so this is the only chance to see it (well, except that there’s a second pivot to build for Spider, but let’s ignore that). Barth, Laura, Juan, and a machinist (Frank?) did the assembly. Pictures courtesy of Juan.

The process is actually quite tricky […]

Cryostat Joints, Insert Flower

The cryostat joints have been finished. These live at the sides of Spider and the cryostat elevation bearings will live on top of them.

Another interesting discovery is that when you give inserts enough sunlight (it was sunny for a few days before the April snows started…) then it will sprout a strange flower. I […]

BLAST Inner Frame and Platform

In lieu of pictures from putting the inner frame on, here are pictures of it in its put-on state. This also shows the liquid balance system which can be used to dynamically balance the inner frame.

Last of all there are pictures of a hex cell platform to mount electronics to. It’s not super interesting […]