Thursday February 5^th 2009. Launch -70 days.

Today was an even longer day than yesterday, but with a difference. Things are looking up! This morning, our System Engineer revealed that everything worked well last night. We all felt far more cheerful as our software technicians and engineers are beating the remaining bugs in the system. Most of the news this morning was encouraging.

Things got better through the day. Last night I went home pretty depressed thinking that the problem with the delivery of observations from the instruments had most likely been due to a mistake by me. Through the day there was a constant too and fro over this: there were two, minor inconsistencies between what I expected to find and what I was actually finding. As we went through checks it became obvious that if the problem was at our end, it was not obvious. Finally, came the good news. It was the instrument team who had made the mistake and I had trapped it correctly. Fair enough, my reward was to have to stay at work until well past 9pm to process their corrected delivery, but it was one occasion when tiredness did not matter. The climb up that first, steep hill on the bike felt pretty good when everything was processed and found to be correct this time.

This is one of those times when the job is so satisfying. When you are testing something incredibly complicated and trying to ensure that it works perfectly when needed, each problem found and solved feels like a victory.

We are getting there. Can we get our system ready for launch? Yes we can!!!