<\/a>Ceremonial preparation of shiny sheet <\/div>
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<\/a>South Pole visitors <\/div>
We put Roger to work<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Cynthia's alien face <\/div>
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<\/a>Showing off her uncut tape backing <\/div>
<\/div><\/div>![Piloting the shiny "space ship" \u2022 <a style="font-size:0.8em;" href="http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/27717602@N03\/15428730474\/" target="_blank">View on Flickr<\/a>](https:\/\/farm9.static.flickr.com\/8634\/15428730474_195a9741db_m.jpg "Piloting the shiny \\"space ship\\"")
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<\/a>Piloting the shiny "space ship" <\/div>
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<\/a>Space invader Jon <\/div>
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<\/a>With ray gun <\/div>
Low energy heat rays<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Sean takes a look <\/div>
Plus SPIDER in the background<\/div><\/div>![Unsure what to do with his "weapons" \u2022 <a style="font-size:0.8em;" href="http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/27717602@N03\/15863557628\/" target="_blank">View on Flickr<\/a>](https:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7466\/15863557628_cf2a0cfd58_m.jpg "Unsure what to do with his \\"weapons\\"")
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<\/a>Unsure what to do with his "weapons" <\/div>
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<\/a>Ivan with reflected Canadian flag <\/div>
And rice crispy treat<\/div><\/div>![Pre-lifting "dance" party \u2022 <a style="font-size:0.8em;" href="http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/27717602@N03\/16049055561\/" target="_blank">View on Flickr<\/a>](https:\/\/farm8.static.flickr.com\/7482\/16049055561_ece75d8089_m.jpg "Pre-lifting \\"dance\\" party")
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<\/a>Pre-lifting "dance" party <\/div>
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<\/a>Cosmic micro-Rave background <\/div>
And ghost Ziggy<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Sasha's beat stick <\/div>
And menacing crazy eyes<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Upright sun shields <\/div>
With antennas on top<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>FTS calibration setup <\/div>
With a clever mount that rotates it around to each telescope<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Preparing to scan <\/div>
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<\/a>It's a bird? It's a plane? It's SPIDER! <\/div>
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<\/a>Natalie checks the star cameras <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Ready to go <\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Don and Barth supervise, as scanning starts <\/div>
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<\/a>![\"Sean](\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7468\/15431357693_6e42ba6c45_n.jpg\")
Catching up of some of the action since my last post. Shinification of the SPIDER sun shields occupied me for a few more days. Once that was finished, we had a little fun with the space ship\/party room before standing it upright. We have spend much of the past couple weeks busily testing SPIDER in preparation for eventually flying. Some of this involved attaching calibration devices to test the telescopes\/detectors. With space in the highbay, we have also been able to scan the gondola, to test various observing modes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6449,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448\/revisions\/6449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}