Friday March 20^th 2009. Launch -?? days.

The daily dose of intrigue over the launch date took a new twist today. It seems that the provisional date that we have been given is becoming a line that no one wants to cross. This weekend we will be fuelled up with hydrazine in the thrusters. Planck is already pressurised to nearly 300 atmospheres with helium. A GO/NO-GO decision has to come soon.

From our point of view, the question becomes one of burn-out, as it does at other centres. You can only maintain people at a high intensity of effort for so long. In the instruments there is a two week gap approximately around Easter where most people will be told to take time off and only minimum staffs will be retained. We are now talking about including an extra, short simulation campaign after Easter to take advantage of the launch delay. This will allow us an unexpected opportunity to upgrade software and thoroughly test new hardware. Although we can go with what we have got, going with something even better is, obviously, very attractive. The problem though is to make a new campaign useful, without making it so intense that people burn out before launch and the long haul afterwards.

The decision to go for a new simulations campaign was announced earlier in the week and formalised yesterday. So, last night, around 2:30am, I finished a first draft of the Test Plan. This defines what the objectives of the campaign will be, when it will be held, how it will be done and what we need to do to be able to do it. Although the document was based on the previous test plan, it is based like the foundations of a new building on a demolished structure. The whole thing has changed from the ground up. The document is only 60 pages, but it gives people somewhere to start with their planning. The intention is that this campaign will be sandwiched between Easter and launch and will be kept short and sharp. There will be no weekend working and, basically, on Friday evening we will down tools and go home and expect to come back on Monday morning and find that everything has worked perfectly in our absence.

The two contingencies have proved very useful. For various reasons, not their fault, the Mission Planners were not ready to make a simulated delivery on Wednesday of a revised plan of observations for the satellite starting Thursday, but they did a damn good job of it. They are getting extremely professional and have shown that they can tackle a tricky job. The solar storm has, to be honest, gone down a storm. It has provoked some furious debate. One instrument has recognised that it would have been extremely vulnerable. One has confirmed that they did not worry and one has not pronounced yet. The upshot is that we will now get a set of procedures for how to react when there is a solar storm and we know that not everything will be hunky-dory with the instruments if the storm comes. To my mind that is a successful simulation and a successful outcome. We are now discussing what nasty little surprises we can give people in the next simulations campaign.

Yesterday the final day of observations in the simulations campaign was finally scheduled and approved. As this particular set of observations has created a seemingly interminable series of problems, this led to a particularly heartfelt celebration. When we get observations to schedule from the instruments they go through a very demanding series of checks of consistency and content (that’s my job) to ensure that the right software versions have been used, that nothing creeps through that might be a danger to the satellite, etc. Unfortunately, these particular, very complex observations, have kept failing the checks. Finally, painfully, we have got things sorted out. We think that we can get any kind of calibration observation generated, processed and scheduled.

We’re ready. Let’s light that wretched blue touchpaper!