I've recently taken a new position at work. Along with the stress of picking up the new work (which is terribly underfunded), I am trying to balance closing out my old work on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project. MRO has treated me very well over the years. I have had a wonderful experience, learned a lot, met and worked with some great people, and accomplished a lot of good things. Needless to say, I'm going to miss it.
But in a way I'm not. I'm kind of sick of meetings not of my own making, and if there's one thing that the MRO project excels at, it's holding meetings.
Change is always a bittersweet thing. On the one hand, staying where you are is comfortable and you know what you're in for. On the other hand, moving on provides new challenges and opportunities, and should ultimately be for your benefit. I'm in that funny transition period right now between having sorrow for what I am losing, and excitement for that which I gain. It's an odd feeling.
In the meantime, things are happening to change my lifestyle at work. I am moving from the 5th floor of my building, where I have a spectacular view to the east (glorious sunrises, squirrels climbing the tall pine trees right outside, views of the morning mist), to the 2nd floor where I will have a spectacular view of ... the cafeteria to the west (um, people eating ...). Not quite a move "up", in my book, but that's how things go sometimes.
My stuff is mostly boxed up. My phone is being moved on Monday (not only do you carry your phone number with you in this place, but your actual phone, too -- I have a dinosaur from 1995 that I really like). My new internet connection is ready for me in the new cubicle. It's now just a matter of actually hauling my stuff downstairs ... but I don't really want to. I like it up here on the 5th floor. Before 2003 when I moved to the 5th floor, I used to have the adjacent cubicle to the one I am moving to, and while it was a happy place, it wasn't as happy of a place as where I am now.
I don't really have much incentive to go. I don't really use my phone, and with a laptop I can work practically anywhere. To make matters worse, I have no compelling need to move. Nobody will be moving into the cubicle I'm vacating for an indefinite amount of time, and people are actually surprised that I'm moving. Some are even a little concerned (how touching!), because I've been with the project so long and carry much of the project memory around in my head; I think there's only a hand full of people who still work on the project that have been with it longer than me ... not even the project manager!
Maybe what I'll do is inhabit both places for a while. I could keep my land-line down there, with my extra monitor, and all my stuff, but just ... sit ... up here on the 5th floor. That way, nobody can find me, my phone won't be ringing, and I could probably get a lot of good work done. Now that's an idea.
Showing posts with label mro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mro. Show all posts
Friday, January 9, 2009
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Odyssey's In Safemode
You heard it here first, kids. -- written at 6/4/08 at 11:57 AM.
Okay, so I published too early. My project manager got a call from headquarters that wasn't happy the beans had been spilled before lots of other people had been notified and so I pulled this post down. Ah, well. I'll be a little more gun-shy next time, I guess.
Anyway, so my previous point (and the reason I wrote this in the first place), was not to advertise that Odyssey was in safemode, but rather to lament that PHX had pretty much been systematically gutting their plans to use MRO because of the uncertainty with our radio's behavior. At this time, the radio hasn't had an "incident" in over a week, which is pretty good, but I can understand their concern. The problem is that with Odyssey going into safemode, they aren't immediately ready to relay with MRO. It's going to take an awful lot of effort (I'm writing this at 9:55 at night, and will likely be here another hour or two) to get both projects talking to each other.
It was a little short-sighted, but what can you do? We (and they, being Phoenix) are learning. Unfortunately, I, personally, am bearing much of the burden here ... *sigh* I need a nap.
Okay, so I published too early. My project manager got a call from headquarters that wasn't happy the beans had been spilled before lots of other people had been notified and so I pulled this post down. Ah, well. I'll be a little more gun-shy next time, I guess.
Anyway, so my previous point (and the reason I wrote this in the first place), was not to advertise that Odyssey was in safemode, but rather to lament that PHX had pretty much been systematically gutting their plans to use MRO because of the uncertainty with our radio's behavior. At this time, the radio hasn't had an "incident" in over a week, which is pretty good, but I can understand their concern. The problem is that with Odyssey going into safemode, they aren't immediately ready to relay with MRO. It's going to take an awful lot of effort (I'm writing this at 9:55 at night, and will likely be here another hour or two) to get both projects talking to each other.
It was a little short-sighted, but what can you do? We (and they, being Phoenix) are learning. Unfortunately, I, personally, am bearing much of the burden here ... *sigh* I need a nap.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Not Fast Enough ...
You know when it's Friday afternoon, and you're almost done with your work, and you think you might be able to get away a little early, then somebody walks in, and that somebody has something terribly urgent that must be done right now, and it really is important, so you can't really leave and you're stuck not only staying 'til the normal departure time, but maybe even a little later? Well, I think that just happened to me.
My boys are not going to be happy.
My boys are not going to be happy.
It's Friday
I'm burned out. I've been working every day for the last 6 days, and I'm pretty well done. I've committed to taking my boys camping tonight, which, for all intents and purposes, should be fun, but I'd rather just go home, lay down on the couch, and take a nap. But, I gotta be a good dad, so it's off to camping we will go.
When we leave, on the other hand, is another story. I'm waiting for a script to finish running, which should help us know when we have opportunities for MRO to talk with PHX a little easier, but it's messy and taking a long time. I made the mistake of coding it into "csh" instead of something faster, but it will take less time just to let it run than it would to rewrite it, and it must be done today.
When it is done, though, I'll be heading home ASAP -- even though I've got a meeting I'm supposed to attend.
As for how the radio is working on MRO -- there's been no change. We've had 16 successful sessions, with the 3 bad sessions that vex us. Currently, the Phoenix project has written us off as a viable relay asset (which is the right thing to do) until we get it figured out. The radio guys haven't got a solid theory, yet, as to why it's doing it, and we can't replicate the problem in our ground testbeds. They've got "fault trees" growing out their ears, and are down into the dirt of analysis. There will be daily meetings with the anomaly resolution team (which, thankfully, I'm not part of) until they get it straightened out.
As for me, I just have to keep things going -- being available to answer questions when they arise.
I need to go home ...
When we leave, on the other hand, is another story. I'm waiting for a script to finish running, which should help us know when we have opportunities for MRO to talk with PHX a little easier, but it's messy and taking a long time. I made the mistake of coding it into "csh" instead of something faster, but it will take less time just to let it run than it would to rewrite it, and it must be done today.
When it is done, though, I'll be heading home ASAP -- even though I've got a meeting I'm supposed to attend.
As for how the radio is working on MRO -- there's been no change. We've had 16 successful sessions, with the 3 bad sessions that vex us. Currently, the Phoenix project has written us off as a viable relay asset (which is the right thing to do) until we get it figured out. The radio guys haven't got a solid theory, yet, as to why it's doing it, and we can't replicate the problem in our ground testbeds. They've got "fault trees" growing out their ears, and are down into the dirt of analysis. There will be daily meetings with the anomaly resolution team (which, thankfully, I'm not part of) until they get it straightened out.
As for me, I just have to keep things going -- being available to answer questions when they arise.
I need to go home ...
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Historic Words
Before we attempted it, I knew it was something historic. Management was concerned about taking the picture because they were nervous about us messing up an already tested sequence against which we had simulated and practiced. Knowing how it was to be implemented, that seemed like the least of our concerns, so I was somewhat frustrated by the continued reluctance of management, even after we did our best to explain that it was a very low-risk change to the plan. We eventually ended up doing dual development on the command sequences -- one with the image included and one with it excluded. It was twice the work, but it's understandable how management would want to mitigate the risk at that point, despite how much work it was. Now I am so glad that I helped push to make this happen.
Spaceweather.com said:
LOOK OUT BELOW! In the 50+ year history of the Space Age, no spacecraft from Earth has ever photographed another spacecraft landing on an alien planet--until last Sunday. High above Mars, the powerful HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter watched Phoenix parachuting safely to its landing site in the martian arctic.
Although Phoenix seems to be descending into a 10-km-wide crater named Heimdall, "that is just an optical illusion," says Alfred McEwen, HiRISE principal investigator at the University of Arizona. In fact, "the lander is 20 km in front of the crater" and in no danger of tumbling down its rocky slopes. After this photo was taken, Phoenix drifted on by and landed in a rock-free field of icy polygons--just where mission planners wanted it to go.
Awesome.
Spaceweather.com said:
LOOK OUT BELOW! In the 50+ year history of the Space Age, no spacecraft from Earth has ever photographed another spacecraft landing on an alien planet--until last Sunday. High above Mars, the powerful HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter watched Phoenix parachuting safely to its landing site in the martian arctic.
Although Phoenix seems to be descending into a 10-km-wide crater named Heimdall, "that is just an optical illusion," says Alfred McEwen, HiRISE principal investigator at the University of Arizona. In fact, "the lander is 20 km in front of the crater" and in no danger of tumbling down its rocky slopes. After this photo was taken, Phoenix drifted on by and landed in a rock-free field of icy polygons--just where mission planners wanted it to go.
Awesome.
The State of Things As They Are
Well, so the radio seems to be behaving much, much better since yesterday, though we still don't know why it had a problem. Apparently, the radio tripped a "power-on reset", and it took slightly too long to recover, and the rest of the spacecraft thought it was broken and powered it off. We scrambled to power it back on, but we saw on the next recording session a similar thing, but the reset was speedy enough that the spacecraft didn't power it down. What's weirdest of all is that we've had 7 overflights since then and we haven't seen the same thing again.
Bottom line: the root cause is not known at this time, neither is a workaround. Electra can not be considered a reliable relay link.
In other news, the spectacular image I posted yesterday was taken approximately 20 seconds after the parachute deployed, and 3 seconds after the heat shield separated. The lander was in-flight, about 760 kilometers away at a viewing angle of 26 degrees below the horizon (or 64 degrees from our normal viewing angle of straight down, or nadir). Apparently, the scale of the image is about 0.76 meters per pixel.
We also believe we have precisely pinpointed the lander, though the coordinates don't currently match where the Phoenix project believes they are with other data. In the pictures, the lander itself is somewhere about 68.224246 N latitude (in aerocentric coordinates) and 234.247463 W latitude. I'm sure there's some geocachers out there, who would be interested in knowing that if you were to go there on Earth you'd go to the middle of the (quite desolate) Republic of Sakha in Russia. Very cool.
Bottom line: the root cause is not known at this time, neither is a workaround. Electra can not be considered a reliable relay link.
In other news, the spectacular image I posted yesterday was taken approximately 20 seconds after the parachute deployed, and 3 seconds after the heat shield separated. The lander was in-flight, about 760 kilometers away at a viewing angle of 26 degrees below the horizon (or 64 degrees from our normal viewing angle of straight down, or nadir). Apparently, the scale of the image is about 0.76 meters per pixel.
We also believe we have precisely pinpointed the lander, though the coordinates don't currently match where the Phoenix project believes they are with other data. In the pictures, the lander itself is somewhere about 68.224246 N latitude (in aerocentric coordinates) and 234.247463 W latitude. I'm sure there's some geocachers out there, who would be interested in knowing that if you were to go there on Earth you'd go to the middle of the (quite desolate) Republic of Sakha in Russia. Very cool.
It's All A Matter of Perspective
Sure, the MRO UHF radio (Electra) may be suspect, but a friend of mine emailed me the following.
Subject: And you thought a safed electra was bad.......
Space station's sole toilet out of order
Things could be worse!
Subject: And you thought a safed electra was bad.......
Space station's sole toilet out of order
Things could be worse!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
You Win Some and You Lose Some
On the heels of a very successful first day after landing, we experienced a glitch with our radio. Something appears to have gone wrong at the beginning of a recording session this morning. I came in to work, looked at the spacecraft telemetry, and immediately scratched my head. The spacecraft was using a different clock than the one normally provided by the UHF radio, and the radio was powered down. In addition, a bunch of "red alarms" had been tripped in the telemetry and things looked wacky.
I arrived just moments after it happened, so was on the ground floor during most of the early discussions. At this time, we're looking to power the radio back on, as we believe it is safe to do so, and we will attempt to perform the relay sessions with Phoenix we have planned for later this afternoon. While that's going on, our radio and spacecraft people will continue to look at the telemetry gathered during the "event", in hopes of figuring out what it is.
In the meantime, this glitch cost the Phoenix project an entire day in their mission, if not more. With only 90 days to spend, that hurts. The overflight was their primary commanding session for the next day of activities, and we expected to return a lot of data to them for analysis, as well. Instead, they will have to wait for the next opportunity to command via Odyssey and will have to queue up the data to be transmitted via Odyssey until we can say for sure that MRO is up and reliable again. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it, soon, but while we're zeroing in on the problem, we're not there, yet.
I was thinking today was going to be boring, too. Hah!
I arrived just moments after it happened, so was on the ground floor during most of the early discussions. At this time, we're looking to power the radio back on, as we believe it is safe to do so, and we will attempt to perform the relay sessions with Phoenix we have planned for later this afternoon. While that's going on, our radio and spacecraft people will continue to look at the telemetry gathered during the "event", in hopes of figuring out what it is.
In the meantime, this glitch cost the Phoenix project an entire day in their mission, if not more. With only 90 days to spend, that hurts. The overflight was their primary commanding session for the next day of activities, and we expected to return a lot of data to them for analysis, as well. Instead, they will have to wait for the next opportunity to command via Odyssey and will have to queue up the data to be transmitted via Odyssey until we can say for sure that MRO is up and reliable again. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it, soon, but while we're zeroing in on the problem, we're not there, yet.
I was thinking today was going to be boring, too. Hah!
Amazing Photograph
So yesterday's released image of the Phoenix lander in descent was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of that image. Even the imager people were so intent on looking for the lander that they missed the proverbial forest for the trees. Check it out:
It's stunning. The caption from the HiRISE folks reads:
So it turns out that the descent of Phoenix is actually visible in the browse scale image. This image is reduced in scale by a factor of ten which reduces a lot of noise. What’s more astounding is that directly line-of-sight in the background is giant Heimdall Crater! Yesterday’s image made everyone’s jaw drop but this one is mind-blowing. The tiny image below is linked to the browse scale image.
This oblique view has been rotated so the crater is facing up. Phoenix, caught in its Promethean act, is between 8 and 10 kilometers above the surface, descending in the foreground at a distance of approximately 20 kilometers from the crater. It’s landing site was ultimately beyond the crater’s ejecta blanket.
The inset is an enhanced version at full resolution, showing some details of the parachute.
I also found out that this image was taken about 20 seconds after the parachute had deployed. Good timing!
It's stunning. The caption from the HiRISE folks reads:
So it turns out that the descent of Phoenix is actually visible in the browse scale image. This image is reduced in scale by a factor of ten which reduces a lot of noise. What’s more astounding is that directly line-of-sight in the background is giant Heimdall Crater! Yesterday’s image made everyone’s jaw drop but this one is mind-blowing. The tiny image below is linked to the browse scale image.
This oblique view has been rotated so the crater is facing up. Phoenix, caught in its Promethean act, is between 8 and 10 kilometers above the surface, descending in the foreground at a distance of approximately 20 kilometers from the crater. It’s landing site was ultimately beyond the crater’s ejecta blanket.
The inset is an enhanced version at full resolution, showing some details of the parachute.
I also found out that this image was taken about 20 seconds after the parachute had deployed. Good timing!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Holy Smokes
I can't show it, yet, but the full image of the landing image is phenomenal. It shows a crater at an oblique angle somewhere around 60 degrees with a little white speck. The little white speck is the picture I previously posted (apparently viral on the internet now ...). The image is humbling in so many ways. Mars is so huge, and our spacecraft is so little. How we managed to capture that image with the enormous technical challenges that are there is evidence of a combination of great engineering and plain ol' dumb luck. I'll take it. Amazing.
I'll post the image when I can tomorrow after the next press conference.
I'll post the image when I can tomorrow after the next press conference.
The Next Day
Phoenix is still on the ground (shocker!) and things seem to be going very well. I'm home right now, after having gone to bed at about 12:30 this morning. This morning I've been reading the email traffic since I left last night. From the looks of it, we did get the picture of the lander during descent, and it appears that it was released, so I'll include it here:
The caption for the picture reads:
From a distance of about 472 miles above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 30-foot-wide parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but corresponds to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.
Phoenix released its parachute at an altitude of about 7.8 miles and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound.
The HiRISE, acquired this image on May 25 at 7:36 p.m. Eastern Time. It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel.
You can lighten the image a bit to see some of the background of Mars.
It should be interesting to see how things are when I get to work. I've asked our navigators to pull together a movie of the reconstructed trajectory of both Phoenix during it's terminal descent and MRO so we can see exactly when/where the image was taken.
In other news, it's the Memorial Day holiday. The kids are home from school today (and driving us nuts). My wife fled the house to go clothes shopping and to buy a tree for the back yard just to have some time away. She's been front-and-center in the fight to potty-train our youngest (which is going very well) while I was at work yesterday, so she really needed the break.
Anyway, even though I'm here with the kids, they're all distracted, and my mind keeps focusing on work. Kind of a tough thing to let go, since my life for the past year-and-a-half has been centered around getting ready for Phoenix to get to Mars. They're there now, things have mostly "fallen" into place, and things are going smoothly. Everybody's doing their jobs as I trained them to do them (looking pretty good, if I do say so myself), and the software and operational strategies are hanging together.
With Phoenix on the ground, it would be easy to feel relief. Truth be told, what is to come for Phoenix will be harder on the team than what has already happened. With Mars Science Laboratory launching next year, they will be knocking on our door now to do testing and development for them, too. Not exactly a break. Time will tell, though.
The caption for the picture reads:
From a distance of about 472 miles above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 30-foot-wide parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but corresponds to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.
Phoenix released its parachute at an altitude of about 7.8 miles and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound.
The HiRISE, acquired this image on May 25 at 7:36 p.m. Eastern Time. It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel.
You can lighten the image a bit to see some of the background of Mars.
It should be interesting to see how things are when I get to work. I've asked our navigators to pull together a movie of the reconstructed trajectory of both Phoenix during it's terminal descent and MRO so we can see exactly when/where the image was taken.
In other news, it's the Memorial Day holiday. The kids are home from school today (and driving us nuts). My wife fled the house to go clothes shopping and to buy a tree for the back yard just to have some time away. She's been front-and-center in the fight to potty-train our youngest (which is going very well) while I was at work yesterday, so she really needed the break.
Anyway, even though I'm here with the kids, they're all distracted, and my mind keeps focusing on work. Kind of a tough thing to let go, since my life for the past year-and-a-half has been centered around getting ready for Phoenix to get to Mars. They're there now, things have mostly "fallen" into place, and things are going smoothly. Everybody's doing their jobs as I trained them to do them (looking pretty good, if I do say so myself), and the software and operational strategies are hanging together.
With Phoenix on the ground, it would be easy to feel relief. Truth be told, what is to come for Phoenix will be harder on the team than what has already happened. With Mars Science Laboratory launching next year, they will be knocking on our door now to do testing and development for them, too. Not exactly a break. Time will tell, though.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
A Few More Hours Later
We've got some of the data back from our imager. There's a white smudge in it, but we're not sure that's the lander. We're still looking, and still waiting for the rest of the image to show up (it's a 0.6 gigabyte image!). The lander spit out it's parachute 7 seconds late, which would've put the parachute deployment about 5 seconds into the image (by my calculations), if it's in the image at all. This means if the lander passed through the imager's CCDs before the parachute was deployed, we'd see a single white smudge. If it passed through after the parachute deployed, we should see two white smudges.
Again, we're not quite sure what we've got. By the time the experts figure it out, I'll probably be asleep, and it will be splashed all over the news in the morning (if we got something good).
As it is, Phoenix appears to be healthy and happy on the ground. It is sitting above the Martian arctic circle, so the race begins to complete it's mission before it goes into "permanent" shadow in five-ish months, and is buried in carbon dioxide ice that snows out of the atmosphere.
The poor people working on the project will be living on "Mars time" (roughly half an hour longer than a normal Earth day), shifting their work schedule daily to try to take advantage of every day on Mars (which we call a "Sol").
The press conference is ongoing right now. They've given a happy shout-out to MRO, as we are intending to image the landing site as soon as we possibly can. It should be interesting to see where they really are on Mars. Pretty exciting!
For me, I've got a meeting to go to in a half hour where we expect to hear if we will be allowed to overwrite the EDL data onboard in favor of additional overflights, the first of which is in a few hours. I had hoped we would have the HiRISE image to show in that meeting, but it's not to be, I don't think. All Phoenix data is flowing through our system just fine, and things are looking good. We've got some people running around right now trying to update the coordinates for the landing site (since they're way off from where they estimated) for our first image in about 6 hours ... should be good!
Again, we're not quite sure what we've got. By the time the experts figure it out, I'll probably be asleep, and it will be splashed all over the news in the morning (if we got something good).
As it is, Phoenix appears to be healthy and happy on the ground. It is sitting above the Martian arctic circle, so the race begins to complete it's mission before it goes into "permanent" shadow in five-ish months, and is buried in carbon dioxide ice that snows out of the atmosphere.
The poor people working on the project will be living on "Mars time" (roughly half an hour longer than a normal Earth day), shifting their work schedule daily to try to take advantage of every day on Mars (which we call a "Sol").
The press conference is ongoing right now. They've given a happy shout-out to MRO, as we are intending to image the landing site as soon as we possibly can. It should be interesting to see where they really are on Mars. Pretty exciting!
For me, I've got a meeting to go to in a half hour where we expect to hear if we will be allowed to overwrite the EDL data onboard in favor of additional overflights, the first of which is in a few hours. I had hoped we would have the HiRISE image to show in that meeting, but it's not to be, I don't think. All Phoenix data is flowing through our system just fine, and things are looking good. We've got some people running around right now trying to update the coordinates for the landing site (since they're way off from where they estimated) for our first image in about 6 hours ... should be good!
A Few Hours Later
Phoenix is on the ground. They've returned data (and pictures!) via Odyssey of it's surrounding terrain. The surface looks solid, as the landing footpads haven't sunk into the surrounding "soil". Everything is very flat, with only small rocks nearby to look at. This makes the landing people very happy, because it's a very safe place to land, but it's not so interesting scenery to most (except the geologists).
The MRO open-loop data has returned and we've got a complete product on the ground. Phoenix can now take that data and extract additional data regarding the descent. Since everything is going so well, that data isn't likely to be of much use, but the descent engineers are fascinated.
These images are some of the first images returned from the surface of Mars near the Phoenix lander. They're fascinating in their own right, not because of what they contain, but by virtue of how they were taken and received. These images were taken by the imager atop the Phoenix lander, stored for a few hours, then transmitted to the orbiting spacecraft Odyssey, and relayed back to Earth, traveling 15 minutes 20 seconds at the speed of light, where they were received at the Deep Space Network and transmitted to JPL (where I work), then transmitted to The University of Arizona and published on the web, where I downloaded them and then put them on this blog. Cool.
Here's one of the solar arrays and one of the foot pads. Awesome.
The MRO open-loop data has returned and we've got a complete product on the ground. Phoenix can now take that data and extract additional data regarding the descent. Since everything is going so well, that data isn't likely to be of much use, but the descent engineers are fascinated.
These images are some of the first images returned from the surface of Mars near the Phoenix lander. They're fascinating in their own right, not because of what they contain, but by virtue of how they were taken and received. These images were taken by the imager atop the Phoenix lander, stored for a few hours, then transmitted to the orbiting spacecraft Odyssey, and relayed back to Earth, traveling 15 minutes 20 seconds at the speed of light, where they were received at the Deep Space Network and transmitted to JPL (where I work), then transmitted to The University of Arizona and published on the web, where I downloaded them and then put them on this blog. Cool.
Here's one of the solar arrays and one of the foot pads. Awesome.
Waiting Again
So now that Phoenix is on the ground, we're waiting for MRO to get re-oriented and to begin transmitting all the data it recorded during PHX EDL. There shouldn't be much to learn from the data since the Phoenix signal through Odyssey was maintained all the way down (phenomenal! no plasma blackout!), but once it's on the ground, we can then start downlinking something unique that we took ...
We tried to take a picture of Phoenix while it was descending, dangling from it's parachute. We may or may not have got it, but we shall see! We're hopeful, and if we got it and if it's any good, wow! It would be nothing short of awesome -- a real first. We'll see!
Still waiting ...
We tried to take a picture of Phoenix while it was descending, dangling from it's parachute. We may or may not have got it, but we shall see! We're hopeful, and if we got it and if it's any good, wow! It would be nothing short of awesome -- a real first. We'll see!
Still waiting ...
People are Already Clapping
A bit premature, I think. They're excited because they see data flowing from Phoenix to Odyssey. MRO has started recording.
Atmospheric entry is in 5 1/2 minutes.
Got a call from my in-laws on my cell phone ... yeah, like I'm going to answer that right now.
Atmospheric entry is in 5 1/2 minutes.
Got a call from my in-laws on my cell phone ... yeah, like I'm going to answer that right now.
Slew Complete
MRO has completed it's slew to an absolute orientation. We see telemetry flowing from the spacecraft. Our high-gain antenna is now pointed directly at the Earth and we're transmitting normal engineering telemetry. In about 15 minutes, the spacecraft will load the command sequence that will configure our UHF antenna to record open-loop the UHF spectrum. Phoenix is now 33 minutes from entry.
Our First Glitch
I hope it's the only one we have. One of the antennas at Goldstone, CA (DSS-15) is having some issues with their uplink system (an "uplink interlock" issue), so they have stowed the antenna. We still have DSS-25 tracking MRO, so we're good for downlink, but we're single-string there now. Not a big deal, but it is a glitch.
Update 4:04 pm: They have just reported that they will be back up and running and should be ready to receive MRO's signal in a few minutes.
Update 4:04 pm: They have just reported that they will be back up and running and should be ready to receive MRO's signal in a few minutes.
We're Ready
Really, I told you so! I just got off the voice net with all the subsystems. This is what they told me:
Systems = nominal
Electra (our UHF radio) = go
Telecom = nominal, signal is good
ACS = nominal, reaction wheel speeds are low, speeds match predicts
EEDAT (our data accountability team) = configured and ready
GDS (our ground data system team) = ready
Ace (our uplink people) = all nominal, ready
Flight Software = onboard memory buffers are empty, ready
Payload = all instruments are off except HiRISE, as expected; configured and ready
See? Loads of fun. I reported this status to my mission manager and then to the Phoenix project. Having everything nominal is always good. Next step is to move our solar arrays and high-gain antenna then to slew to an inertial position waiting for Phoenix to arrive.
Systems = nominal
Electra (our UHF radio) = go
Telecom = nominal, signal is good
ACS = nominal, reaction wheel speeds are low, speeds match predicts
EEDAT (our data accountability team) = configured and ready
GDS (our ground data system team) = ready
Ace (our uplink people) = all nominal, ready
Flight Software = onboard memory buffers are empty, ready
Payload = all instruments are off except HiRISE, as expected; configured and ready
See? Loads of fun. I reported this status to my mission manager and then to the Phoenix project. Having everything nominal is always good. Next step is to move our solar arrays and high-gain antenna then to slew to an inertial position waiting for Phoenix to arrive.
Still Waiting
We're about 2 hours and 20 minutes out. We're bored out of our minds. We've spent a lot of time just figuring out how to bring up several of the monitors around the room. We spent over half an hour puzzling out the sound system so we could hear NASA TV. It's truly a good use of our time ... right?
We did, however, do our voice checks on the voice network. Everything's going smoothly. In the next half hour, we'll watch as the spacecraft powers down the last MRO instrument that needs to be powered down prior to Phoenix EDL, and then I'll do a readiness poll of the various teams on the MRO project to assess our "readiness" to support EDL. All told, aside from any failures, we're as ready as we're going to be for this.
People have started to show up. The project manager came with two bags full of cookies. My good wife sent a big half-sheet cake for consumption later today after Phoenix is on the ground.
We did, however, do our voice checks on the voice network. Everything's going smoothly. In the next half hour, we'll watch as the spacecraft powers down the last MRO instrument that needs to be powered down prior to Phoenix EDL, and then I'll do a readiness poll of the various teams on the MRO project to assess our "readiness" to support EDL. All told, aside from any failures, we're as ready as we're going to be for this.
People have started to show up. The project manager came with two bags full of cookies. My good wife sent a big half-sheet cake for consumption later today after Phoenix is on the ground.
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