We were assigned a new time at 7pm for the aircraft test, which was later-on moved to 8pm. Things then proceeded well and we operated most of our equipment in the aircraft. The carpenters had fabricated a crate for us that can hold all computers, and we had a rack for the radio equipment. Both these 'boxes' were put on an LC-130 palette along with the NSBF electronics. Such a palette can be moved in and out of an LC-130 within a few minutes. It took us quite a while to get all cables reconnected and produce enough power from the 28V DC provided by the aircraft. But we were able to communicate with our gondola in the wooden silo. To do that, an emergency exit hatch cover was replaced with a special version from the NSBF carrying antennas and we put one of our antennas into a dome in the cockpit. We only tested for a few minutes and then moved our equipment out of the aircraft because the aircraft will fly to Christchurch in a few hours. We finished around 9:30pm.
NSBF and NSF tell us, that we need to launch before Jan 10 because we do not have support afterwards for under-flights, cut-down, and recovery because planes are used for bringing back the field camps.
JACEE was cut down successfully from an LC-130 about 100 miles south of here. The LC-130 was on a regular flight to the Shackleton Glacier and a few NSBF guys rode on that flight with their equipment. They could not separate the parachute on touchdown because of a failure. However, there was hardly any wind so the parachute deflated and the payload did not get dragged across the Ross ice shelf.
The LC-130s had quite some problems lately. On a recent flight to Christchurch, all tires blew in Christchurch on landing and the plane sled on its skies, and it sat on the runway for several hours. Another one broke its front gear on snow because the pilots did not test the snow before landing (They are supposed to first touch down with their back gears and just keep the nose up and take off again without setting back the nose gear. They can then fly over that area again and assess the quality of the snow from the tracks they left). Another one was on a flight from the Pole to McMurdo when the weather here was so bad that they had to return to the Pole. However, the weather there was bad too and they were running out of fuel. The pilots aimed at a building that they thought was part of the air strip, but it turned out to be a dome. The aircraft just barely missed this dorm at the South Pole in bad weather.
Today 5 ASA people were sent back home by ASA because of bad behavior (being drunk at work, not working well, fist fighting etc.). At this time of a year they need less people here and the management is therefore not reluctant to send people home. Moreover, ASA employees get up to 20% of their salary as a bonus at the end of the season if they stay down here for the length of their contract.
Since I only got to bed around 4:30 am today, I slept until noon, had lunch at McMurdo with Kim and then took the 1pm shuttle to Willy Field. The NSBF people were busy mounting and balancing the SIP (Science Instrument Package that provides balloon data etc.), our solar panels were already on. The optical pressure vessel (OPV) was tight, i.e. it did not loose pressure. However, since it is light-weight, it bulges and thereby moved a mirror between the telescope and the OPV. The original mirror there was at a distance from the OPV to take into account the bulging. But those mirrors were glued onto the mounts and tests showed that they would crack at low temperatures during ascent. The new mount was obviously too close. Harry filed off part of the mount in place, but then had to remove the mirror to get off enough. Thereby this mirror was slightly moved and we tried to align it during some holes in the clouds. It was quite sunny when NSBF mounted the SIP, but the sun was gone when we needed it.
I couldn't do much. Kim worked on the IMC (image motion compensation), which had an electronic problem. Graham stayed in McTown today. The weather was in general quite nice, with some fog at McMurdo, and it was even more foggy at Willy Field. There was quite some wind and the temperatures were well below zero. Steven tried to recover JACEE, but he had to turn around on his way out with two helicopters because of bad weather. The helicopters fly by sight.
At 4pm I took the shuttle to Willy with Dave. There was some sunlight and I was able to check with Kim that the IMC sees a signal and that the field on the CCD camera is about flat. Steve did some spectral scans. In the evening the helicopters with parts from JACEE arrived. One of the pilots didn't know where to land and put his helicopter down just in front of our telescope, which was still outside for some further optical tests, weather permitting. Very fortunately nothing serious happened, although the solar panels were strongly shaken. It is our intention to launch tomorrow. The software still has some bugs and hangs from time to time. After having dinner at Willy we got back and had a drink in the Southern Exposure bar (non-smoking). The music was quite loud which made me leave after an hour or so.
The Coast Guard ice breaker is close. They have already flown in people with their large helicopter.
It was not clear that we could launch because the wind suddenly started to pick up and its direction moved to the south, which normally indicates a bad weather pattern. Nevertheless, we proceeded with launch preparations, which included an electronic test of all communications. Everything went well and the launch vehicle was moved to the launch area. Fortunately, the wind did not increase any further and the direction switched too. The temperature was around -5 C, according to our sensors on the payload.
The flight line was then set up, i.e. all vehicles are positioned along the dominant wind direction, which is constantly monitored with a small balloon on a long rope. On one end of the flight line, the launch vehicle with the payload is positioned. On the other end the balloon and the helium tanks are positioned. The parachute is attached to the payload and the balloon is rolled out and connected to the parachute. Shortly after 7pm helium was pumped into the 30 million cubic feet balloon. It took about 45 minutes to fill part of the balloon. Launch occurred after 8pm. Unfortunately, a shock typical for launch made one of our antennas disconnect from the payload. Since this was the antenna for the high speed link to send images to the ground, Flare Genesis is blind on one eye, i.e. we cannot see images on the ground. Graham is trying hard to modify his code to send images down over the slow link which is about 50 times slower. At midnight we are still in the Silver Barn and work on the payload.
People were very disappointed that one of the most important things failed. It turned out that the antenna was only very loosely connected to its cable and that the connection had not been tested shortly before launch.
So far we have reached track state 3 after some fiddling around with the parameters of the controller, i.e. we have sun light all the time through the main telescope. By the end of the day, we are determining exposure times and the coordinate system on the sun. At this time the balloon is almost directly above us and it can still be easily seen.
In the morning Phil noticed that we have a fast up-link again and we started to play around with the camera. We soon noticed that images have been taken without actually having any light on the camera. We were able to change the guiding such that we had light on the camera, but the communication was not good enough to try to focus. Shortly before we lost direct up- and down-link capabilities, we were able to bring the software and hardware into a state where it is likely to get some reasonable solar images. That happened around noon. Ashok, Phil, and I had lunch in the Jamesway at Willy Field and were later joined by Dave. Kim had called in the morning to let me know that I am on the flight manifest for a 1/9 2300 flight to Christchurch.
Here is the opfficial report on the launch of Flare Genesis: "At 8:15 pm on Sunday, January 7, the Flare Genesis Experiment was launched under near perfect conditions. It arrived at float altitude about 4 hours later, and after some corrections to the pointing system, it locked on the sun. Pointing is usually better than 10 arcsec rms, as projected. The bad news is that we have a "Galileo problem." The high rate antenna fell off at launch, so we do not get images down in real time. We think good images are being written on tape, but we have not figured out how to verify that they are in good focus. All other systems are working reasonably well and now more than 15 hours after launch, we still have line-of-sight telemetry. This allows us access to our full bag of tricks to get better insight into the payload performance. After we lose line-of-sight, we will rely on over the horizon commands, which are much less flexible. Target selection is uncertain because of the loss of real time images. For starters, we are just pointing at Sun center. We hope to get to the active regions in the western hemisphere soon."
After coming back with the shuttle in the early afternoon, Phil, Ashok and I went for a walk to Scott's hut. We saw a lonely penguin and the ice breaker at a distance of about 30 miles (50 km). After that walk in the cold air, I went to the Crary center to write and read e-mail. Later-on Kim, Harry, Graham, Steve, and Dave showed up and we had a meeting at 5pm. Dave wants to have an under-flight 42 hours from now with an LC-130. Dave wants to have a party tonight at the Southern Exposure bar where he will pay all beverages.