Tuesday February 17th 2009. Launch -58 days.

Today, a venerable ESA observatory took centre stage. The XMM-Newton x-ray observatory passed its 2000th refereed scientific publication. Only IUE and the Hubble, both of which had – or in the case of the Hubble, has – been in orbit far longer, have given rise to more publications in prestigious scientific journals. It is an impressive achievement and an opportunity to talk to one of the XMM scientists who I greatly admire afterwards. The event was marked by a visit from the Director General of ESA and a speech to the troops (“I used to be an engineer, now I have degenerated to being Director-General” was the style of self-deprecating humour), followed by a celebratory drink. Mind you, as it was lunchtime, most people passed-up on the drink.

 

Today I managed to finish correcting and distributing the last of the minutes of the daily meetings. These are turning out to be valuable documents as they give a day-to-day record of what was happening or, at least, what we thought was happening, through each test, warts and all. All the problems, major and minor that were worth mentioning are recorded, as well as the many things that worked perfectly from the start.

 

Our “holiday” lasted about 3 hours. We have now started to prepare the next set of tests. With only three weeks to go, we have to start planning now. That means holding the first preparatory Videocon with the instrument teams tomorrow. It also means discussing what we want to discuss (a logarithmic spiral if ever there was one), booking the Videoconferencing room, both for now and for the daily briefing during the tests, preparing the agenda and thinking seriously both about the Test Report for the tests just concluded and the Test Plan for the ones to come. And while we are doing that, the engineers have to fix all the things that broke last time. Solving problems and getting things done is what we are paid for and it is great fun: real job satisfaction.

 

Several people are taking the day off tomorrow, or starting a short holiday. Looking at the tired faces it is not hard to understand why. Pacing oneself and avoiding burnout are a real problem and not always achieved. People are conscious that we must not arrive at launch exhausted, but it is not quite clear how we are going to manage it with so much to do and people naturally pushing themselves hard to do it.

 

Just about time for bed. I have been watching and enjoying the film “Total Recall” as I write. Boy is the film gory at times, but great fun! It is interesting to watch how Big Arnie has become steadily more respectable over the years.