Monday,17 Jan
Congratulations to all! CREAM broke the LDB duration record of 31 days and 20 hrs last night, January 16, at ~7:40 pm EST. The earlier record was set by the TIGER flight in the 2001-2002 campaign.Current projection of the trajectory, at the current speed,is for CREAM to be back to the Ross Ice Shelf this weekend friday/saturday.Enjoy the rest of the ride and buckle up for the landing.
ES
Friday,14 Jan
Tick tick tick.CREAM is about to break the record. Just two more days to go for the new record! Keep praying and wishing for the balloon trajectory to stay with the 78 deg latitude and to have a nice clear calm landing day in about a week for a perfect recovery near McMurdo :)
ES
Wedesday,5 Jan
The balloon trajectory still looks good for the 3rd round.If the course of the balloon stays, by extrapolation, we may have higher probability to get the payload back closer to McMurdo after the 3rd round. From the Science Instrument view point, there seems to be no show stopper. Everyone is reporting good performance of the system, and hope for a continued flight as long as possible.NSBF & WFF support the extended flight, and morale is high. Since the termination should occur in 2-3 days, if anyone has any compelling reason to terminate this round, better let me know asap. Otherwise, we are going for the 3rd circumnavigation. NSBF knows that we want to get the data disk back minimum and hopefully the whole instrument as one piece. As always, there is no guarantee in the recovery and the support will be on a best effort basis. Just in case you need to know exactly what to wish/pray for, we want to get the payload back 32 days flight :)
ES
Thursday,27 Jan
CREAM just completed its ~42 days long flight and safely landed as shown in David's message below. Thank you, everyone. SOC can now rest. Let's hope the recovery mission goes as successful as the flight.
ES
Monday,17 Jan
Congratulations to all! CREAM broke the LDB duration record of 31 days and 20 hrs last night, January 16, at ~7:40 pm EST. The earlier record was set by the TIGER flight in the 2001-2002 campaign.Current projection of the trajectory, at the current speed,is for CREAM to be back to the Ross Ice Shelf this weekend friday/saturday.Enjoy the rest of the ride and buckle up for the landing.
ES
Friday,14 Jan
Tick tick tick.CREAM is about to break the record. Just two more days to go for the new record! Keep praying and wishing for the balloon trajectory to stay with the 78 deg latitude and to have a nice clear calm landing day in about a week for a perfect recovery near McMurdo :)
ES
Wedesday,5 Jan
The balloon trajectory still looks good for the 3rd round.If the course of the balloon stays, by extrapolation, we may have higher probability to get the payload back closer to McMurdo after the 3rd round. From the Science Instrument view point, there seems to be no show stopper. Everyone is reporting good performance of the system, and hope for a continued flight as long as possible.NSBF & WFF support the extended flight, and morale is high. Since the termination should occur in 2-3 days, if anyone has any compelling reason to terminate this round, better let me know asap. Otherwise, we are going for the 3rd circumnavigation. NSBF knows that we want to get the data disk back minimum and hopefully the whole instrument as one piece. As always, there is no guarantee in the recovery and the support will be on a best effort basis. Just in case you need to know exactly what to wish/pray for, we want to get the payload back 32 days flight :)
ES
Saturday,1 Jan
The new count down timer for the new flght duration record is on the NSBF's web. >15 days down and ~16 days to go to break the record. Happy New Year to you all.
ES
Sunday,26 Dec
Data taking is stable at ~10 Hz total trigger rate. All the instrument sub-detectors operate normally. The house-keeping data confirm the working HV, bias setting, and temperature stability. After 10 days at float the flight flash disk has 68% of a free space left. SOC is monitoring the physics events and reports a good data quality.
Sasha
Thursday,23 Dec
Followed by a perfect launch, CREAM has been flying beautifully. It has been at float > 6days to meet the minimum success. Congratulations to all! Since everything is working so well and the balloon trajectory seems to be pretty tight, I have requested another circumnavigation to achieve the comprehensive success.If we don't go with the second round, the flight has to be terminated in 18 hrs or so while aircraft is available as indicated in the site rep shown below. In addition, CREAM will probably be grounded for a week or so until the BESS recovery is completed. So, I say, why not continue to fly instead of being stuck on the ice for a week. Cross your fingers to get the Christmas present - second circumnavigation.
ES
Wednesday,22 Dec
Everyone, Here is an update on the results of the reboot after the 20 hour outage. After the successful reboot between midnight and ~2:00 AM 12/20/04 communication with the SFC was reestablished. The calorimeter and hodoscope MB HV and bias were found to have been turned off. The shift crew restored the bias, including that of cal MB05 (which previously could not be recovered). The HV was restored to 6 kV for the 7 cal MB's that previously held at 6 kV. The hodo MB's were restored to their earlier values for most MB's, except that MB11 and MB12 tripped at 3 kV and were turned off (HV), and MB03 which previously ran at 6.8 kV could only be brought up to about 4.5 kV. The cal trigger threshold was set to 90 DAC (~75 MeV) until about 10:40 AM 12/20/04 at which time it was lowered to 75 DAC (~63 MeV). Yesterday we started the process of trying to ramp up the hodoscope MB's 3, 11, and 12 back to the HV values they flew at prior to the incident, without having them trip. Following the above, as of 1:22 AM this morning, the cal MB05 was successfully ramped up to 6 kV so all 8 MB's are at 6kV. Hodoscope MBs 11 and 12 were successfully ramped up to 9 kV, and MB03 was ramped to over 6 kV. Today we'll try to ramp the hodo MBs that are below 9 kV to the same 9 kV as all others. If this fails we will restore to the current levels. Given that we now have all Cal layers on we will attempt to move the trigger algorithm today to 4 consecutive layers instead of the current 6 layers.
Opher
Thursday,17 Dec
Hi All, here's a charge distribution from the cerenkov for dec17 with dumb cuts, no corrections - looks pretty good to me. You can already see boron here at this almost raw stage(!)
Simon
Wed,16 Dec
CREAM was launched 5:28 pm NZT and it is going up and up right now. The most beautiful launch - a perfect one. It is the first one of many we would enjoy I suppose.
Congratulations to all!
Now real fun begins with data.
Eun-Suk
Wed,15 Dec
Thursday Dec. 16, 9:30 am NZT.Launch is on! We completed our pre launch procedures and NSBF is picking up the payload.
...ES
Tue,14 Dec
The weather looks good for tomorrow, and we are going for a launch. Below is our schedule:
Thursday December 16 NZT
5:30 am Breakfast
6:30 am Depart McMurdo
7:00 am Begin Launch prep
10:00 am Payload pick up
4:00 pm Launch
...ES
Mon,13 Dec
As you may have seen it on the webcam, the BESS-Polar was successfully launched. According to the BESS report, the exact launch time was 6:54 pm NZT today. The weather was just great - blue sky, little wind, and warm. It was a beautiful launch. One up another one to go.
...ES
Sun,12 Dec
Again, there is 12 hours delay for BESS's Launch.So, it'll be about 12 pm on Monday(NZT) and 6pm on Sunday (EST). One of shift people in SOC (Maryland) should be in the lab from afternoon on Sunday (EST) at least and get ready for operation.
...YoungSoo
Fri,10 Dec
As of 1:30 pm, it is still too windy, so no launch today. The next earliest window is sunday. All day sunday looks pretty good for now and NSBF's pick up could start 6 am to launch at 1 pm. The exact time will be better known tomorrow at 1 pm.
...ES
Fri,10 Dec
LDB intends to launch BESS friday 12/10, about 8 am, NZT. BESS' pick up is scheduled for 2 pm NZT. CREAM is also advised to be ready simultaneously.
Crew on the ice, CREAM crew should have a good rest tonight and start slow tomorrow morning for a possibly long day.
...ES
Mon, 6 Dec
CREAM is flight ready, the path finder shows reasonable polar vortex and weather outlook is good, so BESS is getting ready for a launch of thursday Dec. 9. CREAM will also have to be ready to roll out in case BESS encounters any problems. Make sure SOC is prepared for a possible launch.
...ES
Sun, 5 Dec
We started with a picture perfect day with bright sunshine and essentially no wind. The CREAM payload was rolled out about 10 am NZT. Followed by the installation of solar panels, crush pads, and ballast hopper, LPT was performed in front of the PIG barn. It became a bit windy later, so we didn�?go all the way to the run way but Boss took the payload up hill away from buildings to perform TDRS data flow. Overall, our final hang test went very well. The instrument subsystem representatives declared flight readiness: MooHyun Lee for the Calorimeter, Jojo Boyle for the TRD, Nick Conklin for the TCD, Nahee Park for the SCD. The science operation lead Sonny Zinn confirmed the operation readiness. Based on the reports from the CDM project manager Jeff Reddish and the instrument manager Larry Lutz, I declare CREAM is flight ready. I would like to thank NSBF, WFF, Raytheon and NSF for their extraordinary support for the successful hang test particularly so soon after the payload arrival on the ice.
...ES
Sun, 5 Dec
Greetings from the ice! I arrived on the ice as scheduled. The CREAM payload is rolled out for the final hang test this morning. It is a beautiful day with essentially no wind. Hope the wind stays calm for us to complete the test today.Here is the ice status: NSBF has completed all flight preparations necessary to begin operations and declared it flight readiness.BESS completed its hang test and declared flight readiness on the day I arrived. The first Pathfinder is scheduled for Monday (McMurdo time), weather permitting. There are indications that the necessary stratospheric circulation is setting up at 5 and 2 mbs.Below is a weather report from yesterday: The center of the wind circulation at float altitude is nearly at 85 degrees South latitude, southwest of McMurdo, and is spiraling into the pole. At the surface, the gradient is beginning to tighten again over the Ross Ice Shelf.The forecast for Sunday is for NE 5-10 knots in the morning, shifting to SSW 7-12 in the afternoon.We will get an update later at 11 am but as I gather from the weatherman,
...ES
Mon, 28 Nov
During the test which started at 6 PM, Sunday 11/28/04 (MD time), commanding from UMD to the instrument flowed through ESC, White Sands, TDRSS, CDM, and to the instrument successfully, including multi-command scripts. During the test, UMD operators changed HV settings, initiated pedestal & calibration runs, and reverified peak hold delay times for the calorimeter, hodoscope, and SCD readouts. From the data streaming that came to UMD it is clear that the sparsification system is highly effective, reducing noise in the calorimeter and hodocopes to 1 or 2 channels each per event. Higher noise levels observed at WFF was apparently caused by the local environment there, and are thus not an issue. Setting sparsification thresholds lower than originally planned in the SCD allowed pedestal noise through in about 3% - 7% of channels on average per event (depending on exact sparsification settings), which will increase the instrument data rate in flight. However, once stronger software sparsification is activated for ZHI triggers, the remaining impact should be manageable. Next test is planned for 6 PM, Wednesday 12/1/04 (MD time).
...Opher
Fri, 25 Nov
We have evaluated the BESS commanding interference on this end. We plan to slightly modify the procedure we use for LOS commanding through our ground station, which should prevent our LOS receivers from seeing any of the BESS commands from the NSBF ground station.
...Larry
Wed, 23 Nov
We are planning a TDRSS data/command flow test tomorrow from 12-8 PM McMurdo time. Do we have someone at UMD that can support that test (at least the early part) ? We are not sure yet if we will have people at ESC to support a full test.
...Larry
Wed, 23 Nov
Things are generally progressing much faster than schedule estimates. We will put out an updated schedule each day. There is a fair amount of time in the schedule for weather related contingencies during hang test. I think the gas bottle situation is OK for now.
...Larry
Sat, 20 Nov
Preparation is going reasonably well so far. All of the GSE computers are up and running. The network folks have installed the router and wireless access point, and the network systems seem to all be functioning. We have the legs mounted on the instrument and expect to begin functional testing this afternoon. The installation of the legs was delayed by 1/2 day due to a problem that NSBF had with the smaller gantry crane that was to be used. The crane may have sustained some damage during the adjustment prior to lifting the instrument, but there was no damage to the instrument as a result of its proximity to the crane during the crane adjustment. The larger gantry crane was used to install the legs with some additional procedures in place that made it acceptable to use in place of the smaller one. All of the TRD gas bottles are here, except the two flight bottles, which are on their way from Port Hueneme.
...Larry
Fri, 19 Nov
CREAM arrived yesterday (Thursday 19th) at the PIG Barn (~4:30pm).The instrument and 5 large container vessels were delivered. One of the vessels had CREAM stuff in it and the rest were filled with Wallops and NSBF supplies. Last night we started unpacking some crates. UMD got all their crates opened, unloaded and got their computers setup. It's still very crowded in the barn and this morning NSBF will be moving some of the crates to the launch control building. After some space is cleared out and things get organized we will be taking the wooden box off of the CREAM instrument.
...Taylor
Mon, 15 Nov
We arrived safely in one piece in New Zealand. The weather is nice and I am wearing shorts like in late spring time. In the morning, it gets chilly and it is necessary to wear a jacket. Today we went to clothing distribution center to check our cold weather clothing. We will be flying to McMurdo tomorrow morning via a New Zealand aircraft. By the way, we met Nahee from Korea, Taylor from UMN, and Nick from Penn. State. Seven of us will travel together. All are doing well except Moohyun who is suffering from cold. I will contact you again once we get to the ice.
...Sonny
