Here are the 1) the minutes of our regular telecon yesterday, and below that, 2) the minutes of our telecon with Cetin Karakus at World Star this morning. Please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Minutes of yesterday's regular telecon:
Phoning in: Cordell Grant (Toronto SFL), Max Fagin (Dartmouth/Harvard), Arnold Gaertner (NRC-INMS), Keith Vanderlinde (McGill)
Max gave the report on preparations for the next flights. The upcoming flight will be a flight to test the tracking of the LX200 telescope -- that telescope's tracking has previously not been checked, and we will need that telescope to get a decent observation. But before that flight, the issues with the ELT that occurred on the previous flight will need to be debugged -- Max hasn't yet had a chance to work on that, but will soon.
We are in the process of getting options and quotes for new, brighter optical light sources. (More on that in the minutes of the meeting with Cetin below.) In addition to World Star, we've also talked with a laser diode module company in Germany (Frankfurt Laser Company). They have been very helpful, but they don't have a simple repackaging solution. As background, there are visible laser _diodes_ on the market that have up to a watt or more of output power. However, the visible laser diode _modules_ that one can find just by searching around on the internet from various companies tend to have output powers of, at max, around 30 or maybe 50 mW. Note that the reason we want a module and not just bare diodes is that the power supply and especially the cooling of bare laser diodes, especially high-power ones, is quite non-trivial, and one can easily risk frying a bare laser diode that gets hot -- the high-power ones _need_ thermoelectric cooling in order to operate at their high powers without frying -- it's a non-trivial business, and it's better if possible to have experts / companies just make a module for us. There likely will be two general sets of possibilities: repackaging solutions in which a company can essentially just stick higher-power laser diodes in present module packages -- these would likely end up around order ($10k) for our sources, and full reengineering solutions in which a company would do full thermal and optical modelling of an entirely new, fully custom module -- that would likely end up around order ($100k) for our sources. Fortunately it looks like World Star will be able to do a solution of the repackaging type -- otherwise we would have to petition the government for quite a bit of (highly uncertain) extra funds. More in the minutes of this morning's meeting below.
Labsphere is presently fabricating our new integrating spheres -- we will receive two of them in early December. (They of course are made to go with our present light sources, not necessarily any new ones we might order -- but that's great -- they will be extremely useful as they are a _lot_ lighter than the present off-the-shelf Thorlabs sphere that we use -- and we can always get new, very slightly modified ones from Labsphere in the spring to go with new light sources.) We should receive them the first or second week of December, and one of them could go up to Ottawa so that Arnold can have an initial look at what we'll be calibrating.
We still of course plan to go to Mt. Hopkins as soon as we are able to get a _qualitative_ (but sensible) observation of the present light sources in flight at night (assuming that fits with NIST's plans as well), so hopefully that will occur in around January or so (before Yorke has to return to teaching in March, and while the weather is still bad in the Northeast so that it's worth going down to Hopkins!)
Cordell has been busy with other stuff for the past couple weeks, so no nanosat design updates, but more from him soon!
On the computing/website front, Chris Tooley is testing a solution for the photos section (that Nina will manage). We also need the Instrumentation (as well as the About ALTAIR) pages filled in -- hopefully both Will and Nina can manage that after they finish with exams! We have a nice new little nanosat on the banner logo on our main page, thanks to Max.
On the upcoming grant opportunities front, we are talking with Canadian and U.S. companies as well as RMCC regarding the possible future DND-NSERC grant (likely to apply on the timescale of early next year).
That's all I remember, folks -- please send things I forgot!
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And here are the minutes of this morning's telecom with Cetin Karakus, the CEO of World Star Tech (laser diode module company):
Phoning in: Max Fagin (Dartmouth/Harvard), Cordell Grant (Toronto SFL), Cetin Karakus (World Star Tech), Elena Pancino (INAF OABO)
Cetin says that he has each of the diodes that I mentioned in an e-mail a few weeks ago in stock and tested, and they each could go right into a module. These are:
http://www.thorlabs.com/thorProduct.cfm?partNumber=HL40023MG (Opnext 404 nm, 400 mW) http://www.thorlabs.com/thorProduct.cfm?partNumber=ML520G71 (Mitsubishi 638 nm, 300 mW) http://www.thorlabs.com/thorProduct.cfm?partNumber=SLD1332V (Sony 670 nm, 500 mW)
He also has a 445nm, 1 W one that could likely replace the first of the above. He does not have, nor has he tested, any of the even higher power ones from LDX Optronics, so those ones would likely not be such simple options. He does not think any of the LDs above would have a significant risk of getting fried, as long as they were kept on for a half-hour or less. We will interface with him by e-mail regarding ballpark (and specific quote) prices -- he didn't feel he was prepared to give those over the phone. There is also the possibility of making a single multicolour module which would incorporate all of our laser sources and direct them to the same output direction and divergence via dichroic optics. That, also, he was not prepared to discuss price yet on, but we will again follow up with him via e-mail. Max asked about heat output -- they will likely get warm quite quickly, so (as usual) will need to be mounted in our payload heat sink -- the difference is will will likely need to limit the duty cycle (as we will be in practice anyway -- we don't need them on all the time) to avoid overheating when at altitude (with extremely limited convection). Max also asked about total weight -- the total weight for all modules, or for a single big multicolour module, would be in the ballpark of 1 kg (which is OK -- near our limit, but OK).
Again, that's all I remember, please reply with things that I forgot there as well.
thanks! justin
On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 02:05:27 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi, > > Telecon tomorrow (Tuesday Nov. 13) at our regular time of 12:00 noon > Eastern time (9 am Pacific, 18.00 European). Discussion items include: > plans for the next flight (tracking test, and night flight to observe > the source in real conditions for the first time), goniometric source > calibration, next light sources, nanosat design requirements, the > website, and flights beyond the upcoming flight. A reminder of the CSA > project timeline is attached. > > Here's the dial-in info: If you are calling in from Canada or U.S.: > 1. Dial Toll-Free Number: 866-740-1260 (U.S. & Canada) > 2. Enter 7-digit access code: 5082741 followed by the # > > If you are calling in from elsewhere: > 1. To locate International Toll-Free Numbers go to > http://www.readytalk.com/intl (enter 7-digit access code 5082741) > 2. Dial toll free number from web link > 3. Enter Passcode: Enter 7-digit ACCESS CODE: 5082741 followed by the # > > Here's the tentative agenda: > I) Flights > A) Preparation for next flights -- ELT issues, weather forecasts, etc > B) New light sources, and goniometric calibrations > C) Mt. Hopkins (& beyond) > II) Nanosat design requirements > III) Computing & website > IV) Upcoming grant opportunities > V) AOB > > Talk to you all tomorrow! > justin > > Attachment: > http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2012/11/12/18.02-43361-Schedule-20120702_hqp.pdf >