Here are minutes of our meeting on Thursday -- please just reply with (or let me know) any corrections -- thanks!:
Attendees: Yorke Brown (Dartmouth), Arnold Gaertner (NRC), Karun Thanjavur (UVic), and Houman Hakima (UTIAS-SFL).
As advertised, this was a very brief meeting since I had to board a plane -- we can have a longer one next week. The planets will begin to align for our campaign of flights to begin two weeks from today: Yorke has just finished leaching his last classes last week -- he's submitting grades this week, then taking a week or so vacation, then will be ready to fly; and I'll get back to Hanover on the evening of the 23rd. Yorke and Cynthia have taken a bit more lab calibration data of the diffusive source which looks good. We'll be needing more helium, so that will be ordered late this week. The plan for this first flight of 2015 will be to take telescope images of the source (and analyze them), and we're greatly looking forward to this first free flight of the season!
At UVic, this past Friday we took another set of optical transmission test data on the 10 km path from Mt. Tolmie to Observatory Hill, which went well (aside from an unintentional bump of the laser pointing direction which was very fortunately near the end of the planned data taking) and student Marlene Machemy is currently working on analyzing that data.
Houman and Cordell are making a few additional updates to the LED mounting etc of the nanosat design. Houman has also essentially finished writing up the work up in his master's thesis, and will ask us additional questions if any come up.
We're also just beginning to think about testing some propulsion on the gondolas, with reference to a paper from Yorke and Rob Fesen (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10686-015-9459-9), as well as of course the JHU work with writeup hopefully soon available. That is largely a topic for after we start to get some science, but still fun to start to think about.
That's all I remember, please send things that I forgot. Next telecon in 2 weeks, on Thursday, June 18 at 1:30 pm Eastern time.
cheers, thanks all! justin
On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 01:42:50 GMT, Justin Albert wrote:
> Hi! > > Telecon tomorrow (June 4) at our usual time: 1:30 pm Eastern (10:30 am > Pacific, 19.30 European). Discussion items include: flight plans, light > sources and light source modelling, goniometric and pre- and post-flight > calibration, communications tests, new nanosat bus and payload solid > models, computing/website, grant applications, and recap of schedules. A > reminder of the CSA project timeline is attached. > > Tomorrow's telecon will be brief (as I'll be at SFO with a flight back > to Victoria leaving at 11:10 Pacific -- 40 mins after the telecon starts > -- the flight will likely start to board 15 mins after the nominal start > of the telecon). We could have a longer telecon on the 18th if we wish. > > Here's how to connect: > 1) Open Skype on your computer (note that of course, you should first install Skype, http://www.skype.com , on your machine if you haven't already). > 2) In the "Contacts" menu, add me ( jalbertuvic ) as a contact, if you haven't already. > 3) Just wait for me to Skype-call you at the usual time (1:30 pm Eastern, 10:30 am Pacific). > 4) If there is any trouble, or if you don't get a call for some reason and would like to join, just send me an e-mail (jalbert@uvic.ca). > > Here's the tentative agenda: > > I) Flight plans > II) New diffused light source and its modelling, pre- and post-flight calibration, and goniometric calibrations > III) Communications tests (possible backup optical and radio, etc) > IV) New nanosat solid models from Houman and Cordell > V) Computing/website > VI) Grant applications > VII) AOB > > Talk to you all tomorrow, thanks! > justin > > Attachments: > http://projectaltair.org/HyperNews/get/AUX/2012/11/12/18.02-43361-Schedule-20120702_hqp.pdf >