Thursday February 26^th 2009. Launch -49 days.

Today has ended up being a good day. The atmosphere feels less tense and more relaxed and I have been able to make some solid progress. Right now I am sat here with a cup of tea beside me, with “Signs” on the DVD and feeling somewhat at peace with the world. Last night I was working on the Blog and then the minutes of yesterday afternoon’s Videocon until past 2am; right now it’s not even 1am. The minutes got passed to the Boss for his comments before I left work this evening. The morning’s meeting went pretty well: it was highly technical, but very constructive. After it finished I was able to work on the Test Plan with more sense of knowing exactly where I was going and what I wanted to achieve with it. It helped! Yesterday it seemed very doubtful that the Test Plan would be in any sort of condition to be distributed tomorrow afternoon; today it seems odd-on that it will be ready in the afternoon. Who knows, there might even be the unaccustomed luxury of an early departure.

We found out that one of our colleagues has that most sought-after of commodities: an invitation to Kourou. This has put him in a deep personal dilemma as the trip, for instrument testing before launch, would coincide with a planned holiday in New York with his girlfriend. New York, or Kourou? Well, if he doesn’t want to go to Kourou, there are people here who are queuing up to volunteer to take his place, despite the threat of a giant yellow fever jab needle!

One big topic of discussion has been the progress of the launch readiness testing in Kourou and the reliability of the launch date. Right now the lack of news out of Kourou is so reassuring because we all know that if there were real problems we would hear about it. In fact, all of the anomaly reports coming out of testing are trivial items. Even though launch campaigns are complex affairs and frequently subject to delays, there is a growing feeling that Herschel and Plank are going to get off the ground on April 16^th and that nothing is going to stop it.

Below we have a curious image of Herschel, taken today in the Clean Room at Kourou, with Herschel seen reflected in the mirror of Plank