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Today was much better than yesterday. ( Pre-schooler TMI ) But that is not the only reason it was better, for today, the first birthday card arrived for me, from my aunt-out-law in the USA, and also a Mystery Amazon Package, which turned out to contain this:
[Still life of Slowly Rotating solar-powered Jupiter sitting on its stand.]
If you would like to see Slowly Rotating Jupiter rotating, click below.
[YouTube video, 45 sec, of Slowly Rotating Jupiter rotating.]
It has been gifted to me by My Mate Josh, who is an awesome and faithful friend and has been for over twenty years. He also reads this journal. Thank you, Josh! <3
[Still life of Slowly Rotating solar-powered Jupiter sitting on its stand.]
If you would like to see Slowly Rotating Jupiter rotating, click below.
[YouTube video, 45 sec, of Slowly Rotating Jupiter rotating.]
It has been gifted to me by My Mate Josh, who is an awesome and faithful friend and has been for over twenty years. He also reads this journal. Thank you, Josh! <3
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This is me and Spanish Colleague, at Polish Colleague's leaving do last week. I'm putting this up because it feels like a long time since I posted a photo of myself in nice clothes. I love this dress. The bloke bought it for me at MadChique, a boutique just on the edge of the red light district in Amsterdam.
The rest of this post's content is unrelated to the photo. Sorry/not sorry! Yesterday, one of my Dreamwidth circle brought their daughter to London. Said daughter is about to start secondary school and likes science. We (daughter and I) have been corresponding periodically for a couple of years, and I thought it would be nice for her to visit the lab and see science and engineering in action.
They arrived just after noon and so got to experience the utter randomness that is the lab's lunchtime conversation, as well as being introduced to all of the lab members who aren't currently on holiday. One of the more flamboyant undergraduates currently doing a summer research project with us dropped an f-bomb. (He sends his profuse apologies, DW friend.)
Then we went downstairs and got a proper lab tour underway. Daughter got to see the Solar Orbiter qualification model sensor being tested with its spacecraft simulator, and the JUICE breadboard model electronics being tested with its spacecraft simulator. Daughter got to see the JUICE engineering model sensor being put into the thermal chamber and heated up. Daughter got to see the breadboard electronics for the Radcube instrument (Radcube is a CubeSat, so very small) being tested. Everyone in lab was very happy to talk to a keen young person about what they do, and Daughter seemed keen to absorb all they had to say.
Daughter also got to see our cupboard full of Space Junk. Well, some of it is space junk, like the charred bits of the Cluster I instruments we built. The four Cluster I spacecraft exploded 35 second after launch, and pieces of it were subsequently fished out of the swamps of French Guyana by some (presumably very disgruntled) French foreign legionnaires. The four Cluster II spacecraft have been in orbit around the Earth since 2000 and are still producing science data 18 years later. The non-space-junk includes scale models of various spacecraft we've build parts for, and flight spares, and the bit of glass subjected to deep dielectric discharge, leaving a pattern that looks like a frozen lightning strike.
All too soon it was time for Yet Another Telecon, so I escorted my visitors downstairs lest they get trapped forever in the rabbit warren that is our building. They said goodbye and went off to enjoy the nearby Science Museum and Natural History Museum unhindered by overenthusiastic scientists. Fingers crossed we made a good impression!
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Picture of a metal box with frames for PCBs (printed circuit boards).
I realise this may not be the most thrilling photo ever, but I'm not ashamed to say that I almost cried when I saw this metal box. This box represents 18 months' worth of work on my part (and others', but a lot of it was on me to coordinate) to get A Certain Space Agency to approve our soldering qualification plan for our flight electronics for the JUICE mission. The existence of this box means that we have been allowed to manufacture actual physical hardware rather than just endlessly iterating on bits of paperwork describing the hardware. It's not just spreadsheets and Word documents any more! There is a METAL BOX, and we will Put Things Into It, and heat them up and freeze them repeatedly, and shake the box around violently to ensure that bits don't fall off of it.
I may shed tears when the PCBs arrive and we can put them into the frames.
METAL BOOOOOX \m/
Background information: I work in one of the groups that's a Principal Investigator (PI) institute for the JUICE mission. This L-class (where L stands for "Large") spacecraft has a launch date of 2022, and will travel to Jupiter to study the Jovian system. The spacecraft will be the first ever to orbit one of the Galilean moons. The chosen target is Ganymede, as it has both a subsurface ocean, like Europa, and its own intrinsic magnetic field. It is the only non-planetary body in the solar system known to produce a permanent magnetic field.
Our institute is providing most of the hardware for one of the scientific instruments on board the JUICE spacecraft. We are building most of the electronics and one of the sensors. We also have two hardware-providing Co-Investigators (Co-Is), one in Germany and one in Austria. Our German colleagues have been producing similar sensors to us for about the same number of decades, and their design, like ours, has a great deal of space heritage.
Our Austrian Co-Is, on the other hand, had none.
Until last Saturday.
Their sensor went into orbit around the Earth on a Chinese spacecraft last month. I wrote about it here. The boom on which the sensor was mounted was successfully deployed and the instrument was switched on into test mode.
Last Saturday, the sensor went into Science mode for the first time and measured the Earth's magnetic field. I reproduce Andreas' tweet on the subject below:
Why does this matter so much to us? Because this sensor forms part of our JUICE instrument as well. We are extremely pleased that it works!
Our institute is providing most of the hardware for one of the scientific instruments on board the JUICE spacecraft. We are building most of the electronics and one of the sensors. We also have two hardware-providing Co-Investigators (Co-Is), one in Germany and one in Austria. Our German colleagues have been producing similar sensors to us for about the same number of decades, and their design, like ours, has a great deal of space heritage.
Our Austrian Co-Is, on the other hand, had none.
Until last Saturday.
Their sensor went into orbit around the Earth on a Chinese spacecraft last month. I wrote about it here. The boom on which the sensor was mounted was successfully deployed and the instrument was switched on into test mode.
Last Saturday, the sensor went into Science mode for the first time and measured the Earth's magnetic field. I reproduce Andreas' tweet on the subject below:
18550,6 nT. Today for the first time ever, a Coupled Dark State Magnetometer measured the magnetic field in space. The result of 11 years of development by @iwf_graz/@oeaw and the Institute of Experimental Physics.
Why does this matter so much to us? Because this sensor forms part of our JUICE instrument as well. We are extremely pleased that it works!
One of our hardware CoIs (co-investigators) on the JUICE mission is a group in Graz, Austria who have been working long and hard on a new type of laser-based magnetometer sensor. The flight model was delivered more than a year ago now to be mounted on the Chinese satellite Zhangheng-1 (ZH-1) – also known as the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES).
Today, they got to celebrate a successful launch on a Long March 2D rocket from Inner Mongolia. Apparently it was -15 degrees C at the launch site.
They are naturally very excited about this, but also still nervous, because the boom with their sensor on it won't be deployed until Monday. Nevertheless! Successful launch! Given that it is a single-point-failure that can never be mitigated away, this is always cause for celebration.
You can read more about CSES, and the six CubeSat-based satellites that launched with it, here.
Today, they got to celebrate a successful launch on a Long March 2D rocket from Inner Mongolia. Apparently it was -15 degrees C at the launch site.
They are naturally very excited about this, but also still nervous, because the boom with their sensor on it won't be deployed until Monday. Nevertheless! Successful launch! Given that it is a single-point-failure that can never be mitigated away, this is always cause for celebration.
You can read more about CSES, and the six CubeSat-based satellites that launched with it, here.
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Hear ye, hear ye: on the evening of Tuesday 10 October, you can come to Imperial College London and meet some Cassini scientists and engineers. Well, OK, one engineer (that would be me). Imperial are hosting a Fringe event titled “A Space Odyssey” in celebration of the Cassini end of mission, and there are lots of things to see, including me reminiscing about Cassini operations whilst waving around tiny magnetometers, and do, including making your own thin film paper spacecraft. Read all about what's on offer here.
Book yourself a free ticket here.
If you come along, you can see this beauty without all the reflective glare:
Image of the 1/25 scale Cassini model in its newly procured perspex box for display at the Fringe.
In other space news, ESA have conducted a helicopter test on the radar boom that will be on the JUICE spacecraft, to ensure that it will be able to penetrate Ganymede’s ice crust. You can read about, and watch a video of, the tests here. (Synopsis: Big Metal Box and Poles get waved over fields in Germany, serious-faced blokes on the ground don’t seem to find anything funny about this, pfft.)
Book yourself a free ticket here.
If you come along, you can see this beauty without all the reflective glare:
Image of the 1/25 scale Cassini model in its newly procured perspex box for display at the Fringe.
In other space news, ESA have conducted a helicopter test on the radar boom that will be on the JUICE spacecraft, to ensure that it will be able to penetrate Ganymede’s ice crust. You can read about, and watch a video of, the tests here. (Synopsis: Big Metal Box and Poles get waved over fields in Germany, serious-faced blokes on the ground don’t seem to find anything funny about this, pfft.)
First, I received my Cassini Grand Finale stickers from the delightful ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
marka_design. I put one of them on my 15th and final Cassini lab notebook, and I plan to put the other on my laptop and take a photo of it when I'm at the end-of-mission events next week.
My red lab notebook with one of the Cassini stickers.
A photo of a page of ops checks (deliberately blurred) in my lab notebook, with the focus on the two Cassini stickers as received.
There was a JUICE meeting at my institute this week. It was not for our instrument team, but for another that we work closely with. They convinced the project scientist to attend. He gave us an informative and exciting presentation, but most importantly, he brought a small stack of the very first official ESA mission stickers. I actually didn't snaffle one because I went off with my counterpart on the other team for an hour and a half splinter meeting. However, the PI from their team kindly saved us each a sticker.
The first official JUICE mission sticker, showing Jupiter, the Galilean moons and the JUICE spacecraft. This will go straight onto my new laptop when I receive it. It seems oddly fitting to be retiring one laptop and beginning to use another right at the end of the Cassini mission.
marka_design. I put one of them on my 15th and final Cassini lab notebook, and I plan to put the other on my laptop and take a photo of it when I'm at the end-of-mission events next week.My red lab notebook with one of the Cassini stickers.
A photo of a page of ops checks (deliberately blurred) in my lab notebook, with the focus on the two Cassini stickers as received.
There was a JUICE meeting at my institute this week. It was not for our instrument team, but for another that we work closely with. They convinced the project scientist to attend. He gave us an informative and exciting presentation, but most importantly, he brought a small stack of the very first official ESA mission stickers. I actually didn't snaffle one because I went off with my counterpart on the other team for an hour and a half splinter meeting. However, the PI from their team kindly saved us each a sticker.
The first official JUICE mission sticker, showing Jupiter, the Galilean moons and the JUICE spacecraft. This will go straight onto my new laptop when I receive it. It seems oddly fitting to be retiring one laptop and beginning to use another right at the end of the Cassini mission.
Hello, I'm not so good at posting this week, due to it having been a bank holiday weekend which was also possibly the last gasp of summer, the bloke returning home from Nairobi and us turning around immediately afterward to go camping in Devon, and then back to drowning in work. We actually have some hardware in our hot little hands for the Engineering Model of our instrument for the JUICE spacecraft, and orders being placed for more, and that feels good.
I want to write up the camping weekend properly but for now, a preview from the dairy farm's ice cream stand.
From left to right: S, Humuhumu, Keiki and S's younger brother J*, sitting on a simple wooden bench eating ice cream in cones. Backdrop is the beautiful Devonshire countryside.
* J, believe it or not, is only a few months older than Keiki. He is enormous.
I want to write up the camping weekend properly but for now, a preview from the dairy farm's ice cream stand.
From left to right: S, Humuhumu, Keiki and S's younger brother J*, sitting on a simple wooden bench eating ice cream in cones. Backdrop is the beautiful Devonshire countryside.
* J, believe it or not, is only a few months older than Keiki. He is enormous.
I've had a heck of a week. Keiki was off nursery Tuesday and Wednesday. I looked after him on Tuesday. I flew from Birmingham to Noordwijk on Wednesday and the bloke looked after Keiki. I was at an all-day meeting on Thursday at ESTEC (ESA centre in the Netherlands). I flew to London on Thursday night. This morning (Friday) I went to a four-hour meeting (at which I gave a presentation) and then ran over to another building to give an outreach talk to a large group of teenage girls about what it's like to be a spacecraft engineer.
At least I did it all whilst looking rivet af.
[Me in my Noordwijk hotel room, wearing Docs, purple tights, my black wool coat with the fluffy collar and my engineer dress from Svaha.]
( My week in photos )
At least I did it all whilst looking rivet af.
[Me in my Noordwijk hotel room, wearing Docs, purple tights, my black wool coat with the fluffy collar and my engineer dress from Svaha.]
( My week in photos )
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