We have just returned from our first Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey, jam and pumpkin pie! Herb Bolton, one of the safety control people has invited us and the Oerstedt team for Thanksgiving at his house. This gave us the perfect opportunity to see the typical American home and to chat a bit with the Oersted people. They have revealed their satellite for the first time today, but due to a technical problem with our digital camera (flat battery...) we will only be able to provide you with a photograph in tommorow's edition of the Sun. Sorry....
We have achieved two major goals today:
We have applied power to Sunsat for the first time after the shipping,
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| Photo 1 | Photo 2 | Photo 3 |
The second goal was the initiation of the battery reconditioning procedure. After a small hicup with the software we were able to get the setup running. (Thanks to Johan Uys for reacting so quickly in the late hours Wednesday night). The battery charging was started about 11 o'clock this morning. They will be charged for 40 hours before proceding to the next step in the process. The reconditioning process will continue until Monday, after which the batteries will be integrated into the satellite.
Since Oerstedt and Sunsat share the same clean room, we have to pay special attention to clean room activities. Photo 2 shows the team in their full cleanroom attire with Sunsat.
Photo 3 shows part of the trailer used to transport one of the nine solid rocket boosters of the Delta rocket.
Sneak preview of tommorow: We will be driving to look at out launch pad + we will provide you with exclusive footage of Oerstedt.