FOXSI will launch!

The weather is looking good and there are no technical problems that we know of, so FOXSI is GO FOR LAUNCH on Thursday!

Wish us luck at exactly 12:11 pm MST...

UPDATE: we'll be posting updates the day of flight on our website at foxsi.ssl.berkeley.edu

86 Tuesday, sub Thursday -- new launch date is December 11

(Why, yes, that is restaurant lingo...as in, "86 lettuce, sub tomato...")

After an intense integration process, we have everything wrapped up, staked down, and are on the rail ready for flight!

Unfortunately, the upper-atmosphere winds are not as ready as we are, so tomorrow is a no-go for launch.  Disturbances of the rocket's trajectory due to high winds could cause it to go off course.  If that happens, the rocket will be terminated, which is just as destructive as it sounds.  We don't want to take any chances, so the launch is postponed to a later date with a better weather outlook.

The new launch date will be Thursday, Dec. 11.  Wind predictions for that day are looking good, so we have high confidence that we'll be able to launch then.  Our launch window will be 11:45 to 12:30 Mountain Standard time (18:45 to 19:30 UTC).

In the meantime, two days off for the FOXSI team!  (Cue all the emails from collaborators on my other projects...)  :)  We'll take a bit of much-needed rest and perhaps see a few of the sights in the areas.  We kicked this off already by visiting the rocket museum at the range today.  And I took pictures!  Legally!

Our illustrious Principle Investigator checks out the Missile Park.

Photographs of the Missile Park by FOXSI's biggest fan, Andy!

V2 rocket in the missile museum

Integration time

For the first couple weeks at White Sands, we were occupied with finishing up the experiment section of the payload.  This meant some late nights as we scrambled to put on the final touches!  That was our last opportunity to work with the pieces of our experiment before everything gets melded together.  Final calibrations, alignment checks, etc all had to be done while we could still get our hands on our hardware.  Afterward we started the process of putting the experiment in the rocket "skins" -- the outside shell of the rocket.  And then we began to put the experiment section together with the other subsystems (communications, guidance, power, pointing) that make up the entire payload.

This wasn't a painless process!  We stumbled across many issues here and there -- a relay that wouldn't work, a shutter door that refused open for a good long time -- but in the end we were able to get past each of these difficulties.  We're grateful to the NSROC teams, from both White Sands and Wallops, for putting in long hours to solve these problems.

That brings us up to the vibration test, which was a dramatic enough occurrence that I'll save it for another post.  (Always nice to end on a cliffhanger...!)

The FOXSI experiment in place for X-ray alignments.  Steven eyes his fancy new alignment system.

El Zorrito, our mascot, helps out by writing a bit of code...

This shutter door will open in space to expose our X-ray optics to the Sun!  The X-ray optics are behind the orange thermal blanket.

Electrical connections with other (non-experiment) sections of the payload.  This is the payload guts that you won't see when it's all put in the rocket skins.

Gently maneuvering the experiment section -- now in the rocket skins -- onto a cart using a crane.

The team after adding thermal blankets around the experiment.  It's looking more like a rocket every day!

Putting the experiment section together

Photos courtesy of NSROC!

To start with, an empty tube...

The painstaking process of installing the optics and supports.

Optics install completed; everything nestled together

The detector side -- just as complex!

Luckily, we had el zorrito to give us a hand.

Milo poses with the built-up detector side and the FOXSI mascot.

New safety rules require protective gear for working with cryogenics.  Here we wear that gear with style!

FOXSI, round 2

Here we are, back in the desert just about two years after last leaving.  We left on a high note, with our successful first flight under our belts.  I remember leaving Las Cruces two years ago…it was more like crawling out, having used up the very last of my energy reserves packing out the truck.  But the exhilarating and ecstatic feeling I felt that day seems to have stuck around, because I could sense it immediately upon stepping foot back on the sand.

For those of you new to the blog (that's not you, Mom!), here's a bit of background.  We're testing out new Sun-observing X-ray telescopes by flying them on a rocket.  The experiment will launch on December 9 from the White Sands Missile Range and will be in space only for a few minutes before landing back in the New Mexico desert, where we'll recover the payload via helicopter.  The team arrived in New Mexico last week and we'll be staying for the next month, conducting tests and getting everything put together before the flight.

Things once again feel familiar here, with the same surroundings and many of the same faces as before.  But there are new things.  A new ground station in the Vehicle Assembly Building.  New team members, both on our side and NASA's.

And FOXSI itself is different.  I don't mean our upgrades, although those are exciting and you'll get to hear about them soon.  I'm referring to the fact that FOXSI is now a veteran.  The first time around, the payload was new, with a gazillion uncertainties, and all of the experiment team was new to rocketry.  Now, it's our second flight — we're a sophomore — and that sets the scene very differently.  There is a different level of comfort, as many of our systems are now tried and true, but there is also a different set of expectations.  For the first flight, we didn't know where to set our hopes, and we were rewarded with a happy surprise — the first focused hard X-ray image of a solar flare!  This time, we're aiming even higher, with an eye towards achieving the cleanest data possible.

Stop by over the next month to see how we progress towards this goal!  And to see photos from our first flight, check out our Google+ page.