<\/a>Wrestling with the star camera mounts <\/div>
Before Sho had to leave us<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Star camera wires <\/div>
On the back of Lloro<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Lloro's belly wires <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Tilting Lloro <\/div>
To her neutral rest position, in preparation for lifting<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Spider shirt! <\/div>
Original 2013 edition. Also Sasha is here!<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Lloro lift rigging <\/div>
For future referece<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>More rigging <\/div>
Remember not to swap the 5 and 6 foot straps with each other.<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Holding helium hose <\/div>
This is the one thing we don't disconnect for the lift<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Midair cryostat <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Above the gondola <\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Together <\/div>
And reconnecting cables<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Connecting cables for assembled payload <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Testing the liquid helium scale <\/div>
With about 1000 lbs of people<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Then using the scale for liquid helium <\/div>
With about 1000 lbs of dewar<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Starting a liquid helium fill <\/div>
Installing the fill line's "stinger" into the dewar<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Spider from below <\/div>
Featuring SIP, reaction wheel, and Lloro's belly<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Rolling stairs <\/div>
Are convenient. And very dirty from living outside.<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Visitors <\/div>
I give a little impromptu talk about Spider<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Ladders <\/div>
Need lots of ladders for filling liquid helium with the cryostat on the gondola<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Night shift <\/div>
In their cryogenic PPE<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Manifold checks <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Arts and crafts! <\/div>
Johanna loves getting to do arts and crafts instead of sitting in meetings<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Detector lesson <\/div>
Sasha gives an overview of how our flight code for controlling the tuning and readout of detectors works<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Sasha teaching <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Arts and crafts accomplished <\/div>
The white coating prevents the pivot from overheating during flight<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Connecting optical fibers <\/div>
For detector readout electronics<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Helium plume <\/div>
From venting the relatively high pressure dewar before filling<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Another liquid helium fill <\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Vy goes for a ride <\/div>
With Spence driving<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Debugging the hard to reach star camera computer <\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>I take a ride too <\/div>
When the "big guns" are called in for debugging<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Detector tuning party <\/div>
Folks gather to learn from Jeff tuning a set of detectors<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Canada Day! <\/div>
Simon and I made poutine and maple taffy<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Testing cables <\/div>
To try to figure out some electrical weirdness we saw<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Big liquid nitrogen dewar <\/div>
Outside the Bemco. We looked on jealously as our nitrogen was running out<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Science <\/div>
Using a cooled liquid nitrogen source<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Simon carries TRPNS <\/div>
For more science<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>TRPNS on Lloro <\/div>
Bolts on the top, in front of one telescope, to then calibrate its polarization angles.<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Cat <\/div>
He's taken up lounging on cars. Especially the Kia<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Carbonated coffee <\/div>
We get some dried ice for calibration work, this leads to culinary experiments (failed, in this case)<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>Happy Spider shirt Monday <\/div>
The old timers on this campaign revive a 2013 tradition<\/div><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>![\"Testing](\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52201533152_f3ffde44a1_n.jpg\")
We’ve had a very busy couple of weeks since the last update. First, we performed the lift operation to marry the pre-cooled cryostat with her supportive gondola. This made the Spider payload functionally almost complete, except for the sun shields and solar panels. After the lift\/marriage we could start filling Lloro with liquid helium so that she could cool our detectors down to the very cold temperatures at which they operate. For the cryo nerds, we also then use a capillary-filled pumped helium-4 bath to get below 2 K and closed-cycle helium-3 adsorption refrigerators to get down to 0.3 K (around -273 C). Once we had cold detectors, our goal was to do all the science we could with the limited time and liquid helium that we had available, by conducting a battery of different tests on Spider’s six telescopes. We split into two shifts to manage Lloro’s needs at all times of day, and to efficiently get lots of testing done. Detector experts Jeff and Sasha joined us for this time. Though we also lost Sho to exam studying. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6592"}],"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=6592"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6594,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6592\/revisions\/6594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}