Thursday March 19^th 2009. Launch -?? days.

Every day a new adventure. While the news from Kourou is as good as it can be, the news from elsewhere is still thoroughly equivocal. As far as I am aware, we have a completely clean bill of health ourselves, but that may not necessarily apply elsewhere. While some people are sending very positive messages, others are being much more guarded. There is still no formal announcement of a launch date. Everyone is trying to read the runes, but no one has their dictionary with them as they try to do it.

Meanwhile, launch preparations are going on apace in Kourou and appear to be a little ahead of schedule. One thing is obvious, Arianeespace are making it quite clear that they are ready, whatever may happen elsewhere.

Here, our simulations are continuing. With a solid first week behind us and a system that is day by day better able to accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, this week various new elements have been added. On the one side, some new hardware has been connected and is being tested. This will allow us to have a complete back-up system in place in case something goes wrong with our computers. Various other bits and pieces are also being connected to the system. The idea is that we will finish the week with our hardware in the state that we would like to have it at launch, with a well-oiled working main system and a back-up in place.

Today I have also been the bogeyman for the second time this week. On Monday I announced that we would be moving to our back-up ground station today. Today I added the danger of a good solar storm, just in case our Mission Planners started to relax. This means that people have to take value judgements on whether or not it is (a) safe to continue observing, (b) worthwhile doing it and (c) whether or not to change the instrument that is being used.

The announcement of a possible solar storm brewing (actually, activity s very low, but we will be observing close to solar maximum throughout much of the Herschel mission) has produced some very interesting debate. Methinks that this has been a very useful simulation indeed.