<\/a>Digger demolishes dorm <\/div>
Part of the big station renovation project<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>A (partial) sun shield appears <\/div>
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<\/a>The SIP arrives <\/div>
With all the NASA communication electronics<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Cold load testing <\/div>
With a big "black" (to microwaves) source overtop<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Swiss cheese plates <\/div>
Titanium gondola reinforcements that the original shop made totally wrong. But they're lighter now!<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Night shift spinning <\/div>
Spinning the TRPNS (angle calibrator)<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Elle destroys a circuit board <\/div>
In a deliberate controlled manner<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>The damage <\/div>
Scratched traces to disconnect a bad circuit<\/div><\/div>![More "damage" \u2022 <a style="font-size:0.8em;" href="http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/27717602@N03\/52555266484\/" target="_blank">View on Flickr<\/a>](https:\/\/farm66.static.flickr.com\/65535\/52555266484_bd53086fd5_m.jpg "More \\"damage\\"")
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<\/a>More "damage" <\/div>
Can you find the missing parts?<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Jason is super excited about antenna mounts <\/div>
For the TDRSS antenna<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Iridium antenna too <\/div>
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<\/a>Doors open <\/div>
Spider is going outside<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Sunbathers <\/div>
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<\/a>Sunny Spider spinnners <\/div>
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<\/a>Spider out on the front deck <\/div>
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<\/a>Jeff and Elle and Spider <\/div>
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<\/a>Jeff takes a sit <\/div>
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<\/a>Rose's Spider selfie <\/div>
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<\/a>Jahanna and the baffle <\/div>
Testing Spider's view of the sky through a baffle is why we went outside<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Spider's Antarctic backdrop <\/div>
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<\/a>Sun shield wing <\/div>
The big asymmetric port side wing is assembled<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Foam cutters resort to power tools <\/div>
There's a lot of foam cutting that has to happen<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Foaming the wing <\/div>
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<\/a>Caught Bill soldering <\/div>
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<\/a>SCIENCE penguin <\/div>
One of several cute sculptures hidden around McMurdo<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>Joseph navigates the space insdie the sun shield <\/div>
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<\/a>Joseph, in his forest of antenna mounts <\/div>
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<\/a>TDRSS too <\/div>
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<\/a>Sasha's shiny suit <\/div>
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<\/a>Myseterious foam cat <\/div>
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<\/a>Cargo diving <\/div>
Most of our useful things are inside, but sometimes one needs to dig through the shipping containers outside<\/div><\/div>
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<\/a>![Sasha is really excited about "Sasha's Box" \u2022 <a style="font-size:0.8em;" href="http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/27717602@N03\/52555245964\/" target="_blank">View on Flickr<\/a>](https:\/\/farm66.static.flickr.com\/65535\/52555245964_8bf9b3af6f_m.jpg "Sasha is really excited about \\"Sasha")
<\/a>![\"Sunbathers\"](\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52555506608_4eb813d478_n.jpg\")
With our detectors at cryogenic operating temperatures (0.3 K), our team of detector experts have been tuning the readout to make them as clean and well behaved as possible. We’ve been monitoring and testing detector health, and doing some pre-flight calibration tests. And fixing bugs in the fight code, testing satellite communications, and churning through our list of little things to build or fix. At the same time, there’s a whole bunch of arts and crafts going on, primarily to turn our sun shields from the empty frame they’ve always been previously into something that can actually block the sun, and keep our instruments from overheating. Eventually all of Spider will be covered, except from the front side where it looks out at the dark sky. We might have a launch opportunity next week (it’s too early to say, but near enough to start trying). So we’re going to be pushing hard, and cutting some corners (only the cuttable ones, of course) to be ready in time. Wish us luck! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6625"}],"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=6625"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6628,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6625\/revisions\/6628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/droppingballast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}