James still working on the relay box
Day 13 in Palestine continued the expected trend of testing and analysis. Brian reached a key point in his work preparing the black box recorders. They are test ready and we’ll learn the results of their trial in due time. James’ never ending work on the relay box and flight cables trudged on. He is completing the lengthy task meticulously and patiently. I tested out the hardware on the last two GSE computers, only checking to see that they started up and confirming they did not lose any basic functionality during transit. Thankfully, they ran fine. Sarah’s journey to become the world’s next top break baker carried on. This time she added a bit of vinegar to her bread. I’d say the little kick gave it a better flavor than her previous attempts. Pierre-Simon’s daily ritual of analyzing test data was not interrupted. As always, he looked at data from the previous night’s ground run. This time he compared the online internal tracker trigger with the offline internal tracker trigger. He also examined the effects of different timing configurations.
Robert and John discussing the gondola with the engineer
Robert fixed a small bug capturing the trigger bits in the data stream. This is still being studied to ensure the solution is correct. He once again made a few fixes in the firmware. Furthermore, he conducted tests to find a better trigger timer. The tests ran all night the previous night and will run again all night the upcoming night. John, per usual, led. He deliberated tasks on top of doing his own work. Specifically, he ordered a power supply and held a discussion on the requirements for instrument command. In addition, he escorted Sarah, Robert, Pierre-Simon, and myself on a field trip to see the gondola that will hold our instrument. He allowed us temporary freedom from the hangar and some fresh air on a warm Texas day. In reality, we’re allowed to go outside whenever we want. Basically, we drove across the street to the workshop where our gondola is being built-in order to check in on its progress. John specifically was interested in the cabling to be used to secure our payload to the gondola. It was only a short break, however it was nice to get away from my computer screen for a while. Finally, Paul Evenson joined the team late in the day. He’s a collaborator from the University of Delaware who has decades of experience working with LEE and AESOP. He’ll be with us for only a week before he heads back to Delaware.
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-Matt Collins
