Pierre-Simon and I landed in Dallas around 9:30, eager to get started on the integration. After a two hour drive to Palestine, we were ready to work. But first: lunch. Realizing that I’ve never been closer to Louisiana, I had a delightful bowl of shrimp gumbo (let’s see how quickly this devolves into a food blog). We arrived at CSBF (Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility) around 2:45, watched the mandatory safety video, then proceeded to the hangar to meet up with James and Brian, who had been hard at work for the past couple of days. We helped set up our workspace in the hanger before jumping right into the integration of AESOP-Lite.

The next two days in the hangar can be described in one word: busy. Everyone has been hard at work on a number of different tasks, so much so that it would be futile to attempt to record everything. Here are some highlights:

Beautiful view from CSBF

• Our fearless leader John arrived on Tuesday night (6/21) after a series of airline mishaps, excited to begin another successful integration.
• We began to test the instrument, leaving it running overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. This data was useful in analyzing the performance of each detector and the consistency in the different methods of data collection, amongst other things.
  

  Downtown Palestine

• Robert arrived in Palestine on Thursday morning (6/23) ready to hit the ground running. Our team is now almost complete, and we’re already kicking things into high gear.
• We have been testing the shell that will house our instrument to determine if any pressure is leaking out.

This is just a fraction of the work that’s been going on here in Palestine. Look forward to hearing more about this in the following weeks. As of now, morale is high, the temperature is even higher, and AESOP-Lite is well on its way to a successful launch.

-Scott Martin