Saturday March 14^th 2009. Launch -?? days.

That has been an excellent day. We were only about 15 people at work today, but things went well and the atmosphere was calm and relaxed and the weather was excellent. It is curious but, being a Saturday I arrived earlier and left work later.

We have now had 5 consecutive good days. This was one of our basic success criteria and looks like it will be achieved with ease. With each passing day we show that we are ready to operate the satellite after launch. We are now also programming real observations: these are the first days after switch-on when the satellite will gradually be woken up and asked to do some simple exercises, before being put through its paces ever more thoroughly. The poor duty Mission Planner began to wonder what had hit him as days to plan flew at him at an increasing pace through the day. We are already thinking of bringing in reinforcements tomorrow to help out.

I am immensely happy, both with the progress of the test and with the amount of work that I accomplished today. This has been a major training exercise for me and it is bearing fruit. However, it is also true that when following complex and dense procedures, not being interrupted constantly is a huge advantage.

Last night I started work on preparing the book proposal to relax before going to bed. The basic form to fill in with information is nine pages, but the prospective author is expected to add additional pages with such things as a Chapter list and a sample chapter or two.

Now, it is time to start working on the backlog of tasks like minutes to write up before bed. And it is nice to work as Captain Pickard and Lieutenant Worf put the universe to rights, with a little help from their friends.