Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with, or let me know, any corrections -- thanks!:
Phoning in: Houman Hakima and Cordell Grant (UTIAS-SFL), Yorke Brown (Dartmouth), Arnold Gaertner (NRC), Karun Thanjavur (UVic), and Nathan Scott (JHU)
Flights will resume very shortly in New Hampshire -- just waiting for the remaining snow on the ground to melt. The new beacon appears to be working well, and still could use a bit of field testing out in the woods, which the Dartmouth undergrads will do during this week. When weather permits, the plan is still to do another nighttime data-taking flight, as well as a short daytime flight to check parafoil operation. (I'll help out there in Hanover from Apr. 17 - 30, and then there again together with Karun and students from May 10 - 26.)
We had an excellent introduction from Nathan Scott at JHU, who is working with Susana as well as JHU engineering senior undergraduates on flights later this year with a balloon payload which will contain propulsion, in the form of an RC plane as balloon payload, with a diffused LED source. Propulsion could achieve two things: 1) a direct flight of the payload back to base following cutdown (or balloon burst), avoiding being at the mercy of the winds in regard to recovery, and 2) potentially also some controlled meandering ability of the balloon+payload at altitude, allowing the source to meander to directly between the observatory and the celestial source to be calibrated, which would be an excellent and long-wished-for capability. A diffused LED source at altitude would be an excellent new thing to try as well, for a direct comparison with integrating sphere-based sources. We are very greatly looking forward to updates from Nathan and Susana as this summer and fall progress.
Laboratory calibration-wise: Arnold, together with Bill Neil (an NRC scientific support staff member), has obtained goniometric data from the spheres and our sources (initial data a couple weeks ago from the old stock 6" Labsphere sphere, and very recently from the 2" Labsphere spheres) -- and will send the data from the 2" sphere very shortly. The 2" sphere has issues with a brightness peak from the first bounce from the input light source, especially when the sphere is viewed from more than 40 degrees off normal to the output port, so we will need to study baffling (and also possibly the addition of a diffuser, or some flaring of the input fiber). The light from the laser diode modules also has large fluctuations, which we believe are probably due to the extremely sensitive interface of the laser diode modules with the old Ocean Optics fiber assembly that we sent to NRC, rather than the new CeramOptec fiber bundle (the only one of which we sent to NH), so hopefully is not as much of an issue now, unlike with the baffling (which is undoubtedly still an issue, which we will very much need to address for our next spheres). And Karun has been making excellent progress on atmospheric modelling using MODTRAN together with calibration star imaging data from Gemini, after visiting Stubbs at Harvard in March to make progress together on that.
At UTIAS-SFL, Houman has completed a few more design modifications to the new integrating spheres -- 1) accommodating a Hamamatsu S2281 photodiode, and 2) adding 6 mini-input ports for LEDs, to use as additional available sources to complement (and extend the source spectrum from) the laser lines -- and he is now changing the balloon spheres to be 4" inner diameter rather than 2", as we can use the extra size on the balloon payloads (although a 4" sphere would be too large for the nanosat). He and Cordell are also continuing to work on the solid modelling for the nanosat bus, and on the optical path and modelling from the new laser module design through the integrating sphere.
On computing/website, things appear stable -- please just either post a note or let me know if any fixes or changes are needed.
Regarding grant applications, we are continuing to make a few final updates to the DND-NSERC project proposal (which I had sent around to a number of people). And CSA is reviewing the FAST application from December (we should hear back on that in the next few weeks or so).
That's all I remember, please send things that I forgot. Next telecon in two weeks, on Thursday, Apr. 24, at 2:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 01:46:55 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi, > > Telecon tomorrow (Apr. 10) at our regular time of 2:30 pm Eastern time > (11:30 am Pacific, 20.30 European). Discussion items include: NH flight > plans, a report from Susana Deustua together with Nathan Scott of JHU on > plans and status of upcoming flights in Maryland with a > propulsion-enabled balloon payload (using an RC plane motor/propeller on > payload), goniometric calibration, pre- and post-flight calibration, > nanosat and new laser module design, computing/website, grant > applications, and recap of operation plans. 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) Flight plans and other NH operational work > II) Recent work at STScI+JHU on upcoming propulsion-enabled balloon flight tests > III) Pre- and post-flight calibration and goniometric calibrations > IV) Planning for observatory calibration flights in Hawaii, Arizona, & Chile > V) Nanosat, new integrating spheres, and multicolour laser module designs > VI) Computing/website > VII) Grant applications > VIII) AOB > > Talk to you all tomorrow, > justin > > Attachments: > http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2012/11/12/18.02-43361-Schedule-20120702_hqp.pdf >