Day 6 in Palestine, Texas was a cold one.  It was as low as 9 °F (~ -13 °C).  It was so cold that John went out and bought us a space heater to keep us warm.  To everyone’s dismay, it turned out to be more of a glorified hand warmer out max power.  Fortunately for Pierre-Simon and myself, we had the advantage of sitting on either side of it, so our hands were plenty warm while we sat at our laptops doing work.

Robert, James, and John setting up the shell pressure leak test and putting the shell into the sea-crate

Plenty of more ground runs of the instrument were performed that day and with them were plenty of more computer analyses of the data they output.  We also prepped the shell for the pressure leak test. James led that task and I lent him a hand as needed.  In order to start the shell pressure leak test, we had to move the shell outside and into a sea-container.  This also meant we had to open up the massive hangar doors on a day considered freezing in any state.  While we had the hangar doors open, we also moved all the empty crates and boxes outside and out-of-the-way.  Visually and physically it was a huge difference compared to the condition of the hangar before.

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-Matt Collins