Friday February 27th 2009. Launch -48 days.
Yet another big
step towards a successful launch, which we now know will be at 13:16UT on April
16th: the first of the Herschel instruments has been certified ready
for launch after its ground-testing in Kourou. This is definitely very good
news. We have three, incredibly complex instruments that are made up by no less
than twenty-two sub-instruments. What is more, they are at the limit of
technology and the teams willingly admit that, two years earlier, they would
have been impossible. To have all twenty-two working successfully in space
would be a remarkable achievement. The instrument teams have done everything
that they can in
Back at the ranch… Things went okay today. Once again, a number of people took the day off or left early in anticipation of three very tough weeks to come. As I had promised to get the Test Plan out for the Simulations Campaign before going home I was trying to tidy up and complete the document. This also meant going through the staff rosters for everyone for the two weeks of the campaign to work out who would be working when. Everything got put into a master table and added at the end of the document: that way we know who will be available each day of the test. The final document was compiled and sent out just before 7pm, allowing me to claim that it was available before the weekend. This allowed me to make a dash home on the bicycle before the light failed at dusk… riding home in daylight is a rare luxury in winter.
All in all it seems that people are getting increasingly confident that we are sorting out the remaining bugs in the systems and that things are going to work well. It is pure human nature to try to do a bit more than is actually possible in the available time; this is fine when everything works perfectly at the first attempt, but complex software rarely works perfectly first time – just ask Bill Gates!