Thursday March 12^th 2009. Launch -?? days.

An unsatisfactory day has had a thoroughly unsatisfactory end. As you can see, the launch countdown has stopped. It is 01:20am on Friday 13^th, after a long and difficult day and just a few minutes ago the news has arrived that there will be a significant launch delay. I am not at liberty to say how long as this is to be, as a new date has to be agreed with Arianeespace. We are not the cause of the delay. In fact, our part of the launch preparations is going extremely well. Things are also going well in Kourou. Unfortunately though, there are some issues elsewhere that have not been resolved satisfactorily, to do with the readiness of ground systems. I have just finished a long call with the Boss and we have decided that we are going to go ahead as if the target were to be ready for April 16^th. Next week there is a review meeting to examine the overall readiness of plans to commission the spacecraft and the instruments after launch. Part of our commitment to this meeting is to show that we are ready by guaranteeing to have a significant fraction of the commissioning phase (i.e. the period when we check out systems carefully and systematically in space) programmed and checked-out by April 6^th. This is a complex, multistage exercise requiring a lot of people in at least five countries to prepare, generate and deliver information very quickly and in an extremely coordinated manner. It’s a tight deadline and yours truly will be right in the eye of the hurricane, but a lot of people will be working like hell to get the information to me to process and a lot more will be waiting to process it when it leaves my office. We will be ready.

I am watching “Anna and the King” as I write this. I loved the film “The King and I”. This version is a very different spin on the story and has surprised me by its staggering beauty and wonderful performances by Jodie Foster and by The King (as I watch, surely the boy who plays Louis is the same one who later played Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter?) It is a wonderful film, superbly told, showing the King as a dignified and heroic figure, far removed from Yul Brynner’s rather comical version.