Hi all, it’s Sarah from the hangar (not to be confused with Lucy from accounting, or Jenny from the block).

I left you last time right at the start of our thermal vacuum test, on Thursday. Good news is, everything went as planned. To summarize: we placed our instrument in its shell, in the Bemco chamber, alongside all the telemetry equipment and battery boxes. At all times, we are monitoring pressure and temperature inside the shell, outside it, inside the belly band (a sort of belt made of pink panther insulating Fiberglas, that sits between the top and bottom shell). Every 10 minutes, we write down what these values are. Even more information is also being recorded by our data acquisition software MIPFlit.

AESOP-Lite thermal vac summary plots, courtesy of Pierre-Simon

After a little while, we pump the air out, and the pressure reaches below 2 mmHg in the chamber, we then back fill it with nitrogen and start cooling down to -40C for 2 hours (we won’t be seeing such extreme temperature gradients in flight, thankfully). We stop cooling, vacuum again, fill it with Nitrogen, and heat up the chamber to +40C this time. After another couple of hours, we run one last vacuum cycle, fill it with air again, and call it quits.

A wise man once told me: “the best thing about a thermal vac. test is the anticipation” (the scope of my philosophical musings has been a tad limited lately).

That maxim turned out to be true, I’ve lived greatest thrills than recording numbers for hours. We took shifts and ate candy all day.

Pierre-Simon’s notions of equal Swedish fish pay seem to be off…

Today February 12th marks the one month of our presence in Palestine, and our time here is drawing to an end, as we get ready for our hang test.

Now that we passed that important step and with a week in change left, we are very close to our final integration compatibility test. The solar panels need to be tested with the instrument, and a few remaining cables will be made. And, then, we wait for a sunny (or at least non-rainy day), and we haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang. More later…

Because last post did not have any time lapses, I give you two!

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Greetings friends. The past few days were quite eventful. If every blog post were titled like an episode of Friends (how I wish we started it this way), I would name it: “The One with The Mardi Gras Parade On A Saturday,  Superbowl Sunday, And Unbearable Thermal Vacuum Wait”.

On the “Life” front, we all got to enjoy our first almost full weekend. The town of Palestine had its annual Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday, and we didn’t want to miss on some fun-loving, local cheer.

My mental image of Texas, aligned with reality

Despite the ominous clouds and relative cold, people came en masse to enjoy having beads and candy thrown at them. Spotted amidst the colorful carnival: two high school marching bands, big men wearing a fez driving tiny cars, a dog painted green, young girls riding horses.

Sunday was the Superbowl, and while I usually enjoy to emphasize my contrarian ways on this day, this one was kinda special, considering all of the UDel folks (namely, 75% of our team), are lifelong Eagles fan, Philadelphia being the closest big city over. A few of us made our way to a bar (did you know you can still smoke indoors in bars in TX?), and Brian’s enthusiasm fast spread to all of us. The Eagles won, which inspired Paul to show a dash of creativity in the latest version of our data acquisition software.

Spot The Eagles fan

Back to work on Monday, great things awaited us: we finally moved the instrument into the half-shell, and it’s always a fun day when you get to play with CSBF power tools. After one last pressure leak test of the in-flight setup (it passed), we closed off the shell. At last, we were ready for the thermal vac. test.

Moving the instrument, slowly, slowly, slowly

Early Tuesday morning, the rigging team came, forked our little egg of an instrument, and brought it over to the Bemco, an environmental chamber and space simulator. Our detector will go in there to be tested to a simulated vacuum and a variation of temperature going from (- 40C to +30C, we have heaters inside to maintain room temperature ), but all of CSBF telemetry and power supplies too. We attached the belly band Matt and I had  made to the shell (an insulating foam to keep the temperature from dropping in flight).

The thermal vac is supposed to take 8 hours at least, and we might do two runs to avoid subjecting our trackers to too high temperatures (one run for CSBF, one for us). It’s Wednesday Feb. 7th this morning, and we are about to start, time to get off the computer and start freaking out too.

AESOP-Lite in the Bemco chamber. Sleep well my angel

–Sarah

Hello, world. If you could have guessed from the gaps in the blog’s publication, Matt is now gone, and I am taking over. As a memento, he left us a couple of beers, and about a thousand Q-tips… You shall be missed Matthew. Oh, and Paul also left.

The past week has been spent getting ready for the thermal vac. test, which could happen imminently, John keeps on assuring me. The half-shell now sits on the gondola, along with the MIP (Micro Instrument Package) that CSBF engineers have been integrating, which will allow for the science to communicate to ground, sending commands data up and down.

Our gondola consolidating…

Our efforts this week were focused on mundane yet necessary work on calibrating the instrument’s PHA and barometers to check for linearity in their response (they are).

Pierre-Simon and myself tested the accuracy of the two barometer’s readout, comparing the pressure value given by the software with the Paroscientific barometer we have

T3 scintillator PHA calibration

I also carried out more pressure leak rate test on all the connections (altimeter 1, altimeter 2, check valve, shell feed through): the idea  to get an estimate on how long our shell could sustain a inside pressure of 1 atm (14.7 psi)  without much leakage (1 psi lost over a 5 day flight would be a concerning scenario).

Looks reasonable to me…

The individual component check serves as a diagnosis on their level of potential damage. They seem to be alright…per my rough estimate, we can fly for 302 days before the pressure in our shell would drop by 1 mmHg (1 atm = 760 mmHg, are you getting lost with all these units? I am.)

Some officials from NASA Wallops paid us a visit (including Debbie Fairbrother, head of the Balloon Programs), and thus we were kindly ask to clean up our hangar. I felt like a young kid at school, with the principal coming to our classroom. It feels great to spend 12 hours in a clean lab now. Check out the time lapse to convince yourself how efficient the carrot-and-the-stick method can be.

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–Sarah

Today, day 18 in Palestine, is my last day reporting to the hangar. Tomorrow I fly back to Delaware to prepare for my classes that start next week. That means this will be my last blog entry. Sarah will take over the blog in my absence. Since I really don’t want to write an entry at the airport tomorrow, I will keep a live feed of sorts that I will try to update throughout the day.

9:30 am – Brian and I arrive to John, Paul, and James already at work. Pierre-Simon and Sarah arrive immediately after.

10:00 am – I test GSE 3 and 4 again, still no data stream coming through; I hand the task over to Brian because this issue was unexpected and he has more experience in this field. James is working on flight cables. Sarah is coding software tools, as is Paul.

10:15 am – Pierre-Simon noticed something weird with our data from the PHA calibration we did two days ago. Specifically, the numbers from the auxiliary board don’t look right. We begin re-testing the auxiliary board.

11:15 am – it looks like the auxiliary board or has a lower gain than the rest of the boards. The numbers are still linear, but on a different scale. Pierre-Simon is analyzed the data we acquired to confirm. After, he began analyzing the data from last night’s run. He’s letting out groans of despair occasionally, that’s how I know it’s not looking good. Brian is still troubleshooting the data stream for GSE 3 and 4.

John, Paul, and Pierre-Simon mid-discussion

12:30 pm – It’s almost time for lunch and my stomach knows it. James is still doing work on flight cables. Pierre-Simon, Paul, and John are testing the PMT of the LEE calorimeter using the oscilloscope. They are not getting the exact results they expected and are discussing why that is and how they can amend it. Brian has GSE 3 correctly receiving the data stream, but not GSE 4.

1:30 pm – Brian, Pierre-Simon, James, Sarah and I went to Taqueria San Luis for lunch in Bread Baker Chris’s recommendation. Easily best Mexican food we’ve had while down here.

3:00 pm – Pierre-Simon, Sarah, and I rummaged through the sea crate to find Jame’s Raspberry Pi that we slipped our minds while unpacking.  While we did this, he worked on flight cables.

4:30 pm – Pierre-Simon is improving the Monte Carlo simulation of the strips detector that Sarah worked on.  Brian finally got a data stream flowing through GSE 4, but his work with it is not done.  James is still working on flight cables.  Paul installed another round of custom upgrades to MIPFlit.

Sarah and I making tubing

5:15 pm – I helped Sarah set up tubing on the altimeters so that the pressure leak rate of the instrument can be monitored and tested in flight.  Paul began the process of installing Visual Basic to our spare computer.

6:30 pm – Brian gave me a short Netcat tutorial to set the port forward.  End day.

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-Matt Collins

I took day 17 in Palestine off.  So did Brian, John, Sarah, and Pierre-Simon.  This means we have no pictures were taken of the hangar during the day, however we can assume James and Paul threw a massive party.

The main events of said party were flight cables and coding.  James kept setting up flight cables and electronics on the gondola.  Paul continued updating, testing, debugging, and re-configuring his software.  The list of tasks he accomplished are as follows:

1. 1. Updated MIPFlit (one of his software tools)

   2. Default baud rate of 19.2, buffer flush rate adjusted to allow full parameter dumps at 19.2

   3. Final cleanup of the new parameter reads (temperatures and currents), and possible implementation of additional ones.

 I mostly slept, so that will be all for the blog for this day.

[No time lapse either, sorry]

-Matt Collins

The sixteenth day in Palestine was Paul’s birthday!  Unfortunately, the celebration was short.  Sarah and Pierre-Simon bought birthday cupcakes, so as soon as they arrived in the morning we all sang happy birthday and had cupcakes for Paul.  That was the end of the fun.  The rest of the day was fairly dull.

The birthday boy celebrating by doing work

Everyone hard at work (Sarah is hiding behind Pierre-Simon)

I’ve definitely overused the word continued over the course of writing this blog, but here we go again.  Brian continued working on making sure the data stream was flowing from GSE computer to GSE computer.  John continued filling out documents.  Sarah continued coding new software analysis tools and worked with the vacuum pump cart.  Pierre-Simon continued monitoring and analyzing test data.  I continued working on the website and configuring the GSE 3, GSE 4, and another spare computer.  From California, Robert continued analyzing data with Pierre-Simon and Paul, looking for any anomalies among the test runs that could explain any pre-existing problems.  Paul continued editing his software tools to make them up to date with the needs of AESOP-Lite and John.  James continued setting up all the electrical equipment on the gondola.  For the most part, our work continued and continued and continued.  Everyone besides James spent their day staring at a computer screen.  The only break from the monotony of the day was another form of monotony.  Pierre-Simon and I put in more time calibrating the PHA.  This involved turning a knob, pressing a few buttons on the computer, and repeat.  It fit perfectly with the theme of the day.

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-Matt Collins

James configuring his wires on the gondola while Brian looks on

The 15th day in Palestine started with the long-awaited delivery of the gondola that will hold our payload.  It’s construction was delayed due to a delivery mishaps.  Instead of shipping two long, aluminum plates to CSBF in Palestine, they shipped them to the University of Delaware in Newark.  The second piece of aluminum actually arrived the day the truck left.  If you’ve read my earlier posts, you’ll remember that the truck also got delayed.  If the truck had arrived in Delaware on time, the long chunk of aluminum would have been left behind and the gondola would have been delayed still more.  It’s kinda funny how things work out in the end.  Either way, John was very happy to finally have the gondola in our possession.  Almost immediately, James began putting all of the hardware he had been putting together for the past week onto the gondola.  That in and of itself was no small undertaking, but all of his hard work preparing the relay box had clearly paid off.  On a down-note, this was Robert’s last day in Palestine.  He rode off at into the high noon sun, heading back to UCSC.

The pulse generator on the left and the oscillocope on the right.

Later that day, Robert’s young Padawan (Sarah) aided James with finding the leak in the vacuum pump.  Once they found the source, Sarah spent the next few hours measuring the leak rate of the various hoses and other components of the vacuum pump.  While she worked on this, Paul worked on solving the issue with the tracker board from earlier.  Since Paul was the one who coded all of the software being used originally with AESOP-Lite, he was easily the most equipped to handle the problem.  He spent all day modifying and debugging the software in search of a way to fix the matter in a controlled manner.  Pierre-Simon, of course, took another ride around the loop that is his job of analyzing data.  Once or twice during the day he shouted and did a little dance in this chair.  The rest of the time he stared at his computer, typing in despair.  When his task was finally complete, he and I took the first steps in calibrating the PHA (pulse height analyzer).  I saw first steps, but it was more like first step.  We hooked a pulse generator up to the portable oscilloscope and measured the amplitude of the incoming waves.  We were only checking for linearity in the pulse generator.  Basically making sure that when you turn the dial up to increase the amplitude of the pulse, its amplitude actually increases the correct amount on the oscilloscope.  That was the last thing we did that day.

Sarah cutting herself a piece of cake

John, on the other hand, stayed a couple of hours later.  He was busy with documentation from morning to night.  Filling out form after form from the time he walked in to the time he walked out.  Obviously I’m exaggerating a bit, he took breaks here and there; helped others when need.  For the most part though, his day was occupied with paperwork.  Thankfully, one more thing to the table.  A cake to be specific.  It was called a King’s Cake.  It’s apparently a Mardi Gras tradition.  There’s supposed to be a plastic baby, symbolizing Jesus, hidden in the cake.  Whomever’s piece of cake has the baby in it has to host the party that year.  However, John wouldn’t let us put the baby in the cake because that’s a major choking hazard and CSBF emphasizes safety heavily.  With one more week done, there was one more weekend to work through on the horizon.

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-Matt Collins

Day 14 in Palestine, Texas was not an eventful one.  Everyone pretty much continued their work from the previous day.  James worked on the relay box and the charge controller.  Brian configured the black box recorders some more.  Pierre-Simon and Robert furthered their progress.  Sarah’s long-term task of building analysis software persisted.

One of our many pictures of the collaboration.  Take note of Roger photoshopped onto Sarah’s left shoulder.

Only a few unique functions occurred, one of them being a false start.  The first was early in the morning.  Someone finally came and took away the spare bottom shells that had caused Pierre-Simon to tear his pants.  John helped them take it away with a forklift.  I don’t mean that John drove the forklift, but he helped push the self-made crate onto the lift.  Later on, Pierre-Simon, James, and myself attempted to calibrate the altimeter barometer, but we did not get far.  We quickly discovered there was a leak in the vacuum pump.  This meant the calibration had to be postponed until the leak could be fixed.  Finally, had picture day.  This was the only day that everyone in the AESOP-Lite collaboration would be in Palestine.  Therefore, in the early afternoon we all headed out to the CSBF sign at the entrance gate in order to take a group photo.  Pierre-Simon snapped all the pictures, probably around 100 of them, using his nice camera (the same camera he has been using for all the time lapses).  Most of the pictures were very nice.  Most of them.  If you rifle through the images quickly, like a flip book, you’ll catch John doing a little dance across the screen and then back to where he started.  I’m very much looking forward to having this in gif form.  I promise I won’t share with to many Physics students back at UD.

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-Matt Collins

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