COSI Termination

I’m saddened to report that the COSI/SPB balloon flight was terminated much earlier than expected. The balloon developed a leak after the first day at float and we decided to increase the chances of instrument recovery this season instead of continuing operations for as long as the balloon maintained altitude. The payload had a smooth landing at about 6:15 am this morning and is currently sitting 350 miles from McMurdo at an elevation of 8000 ft. Hopefully we’ll be able to get out there within the week to recover the hard drives and detectors and whatever else will fit in the plane.

Thank you to everyone who followed the campaign, your positive words were encouraging and inspiring. Thank you to NASA and the SPB program, it was an honour to be able to be the first science flight on this generation of super pressure balloons, too bad we couldn’t kick that 55-day-record’s butt. A huge thanks goes out to all of CSBF, the support you’ve shown us and our science team over the past months has been amazing and your handle on the launch and termination was precise and professional. Here’s to another COSI launch in the super near future!

Fifth launch attempt

11:00 PM: Less than 12 hours after the previous attempt got called off, we are heading back to LDB to try again…

12:10 AM: We’re rolling out, and Brent and I remembered to start the playlist! The Boss is about to pick us up.

12:45 AM: We just heard from CSBF that the winds are looking pretty good. We should be heading to the flight line soon. Though that’s great news about the winds, I think we’re all a little afraid to get our hopes up again…

1:45 AM: We’re heading to the flight line! CSBF claims they are “cautiously optimistic”. The winds are staying fairly consistent, so they’ve decided which way to lay out the balloon. Hopefully the wind direction doesn’t change too much.

COSI and the Boss heading to the launch pad

This little trailer brings the parachute out to the launch pad

2:00 AM: Each science group gets to use one of the mules during their balloon launch, so that we can easily get out to the launch pad and back. Brent, Carolyn and I went to go pick it up and park it right next to the weather port.

Brent and Carolyn were really excited about getting the mule

The back seat wasn’t set up properly, so I rode in the back

2:10 AM: The helium trucks are heading out to the launch pad. Now it’s just the balloon that needs to get picked up.

3:20 AM: Winds are looking too high, again.

4:00 AM: The low level winds look perfect, but the surface winds keep oscillating between being too high and being fine. The balloon got taken out of the weather port and is heading towards the launch pad. This doesn’t mean it will get taken out of the box. A current idea is to wait until the surface winds go down again, and then immediately start inflating, hoping that they stick to the pattern of being down for about an hour and a half. This sounds pretty risky, so CSBF hasn’t decided yet if that’s what we’ll be doing.

It’s been a long night, and a long week! Brent and I decided to nap while we waited for CSBF to come pick up the balloon. Unfortunately we only have one cot, but luckily the big red is pretty comfortable.

Now that the balloon is out of the weather port, we have a ton of space. Carolyn decided to lie down right in the middle of the building, something we haven’t been able to do in quite awhile.

5:40 AM: We’re still waiting for the surface winds to die down.

8:40 AM: They’ve taken the balloon out of the box! This means they’re being very serious about the launch. However, as we learned during launch attempt 2, it doesn’t necessarily mean the launch will happen.

9:10 AM: They’re starting inflation! More updates to come later, video here: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm

10:20 AM: And we’ve launched!

The balloon during inflation, the parachute, the Boss, and COSI

Me in front of the balloon during inflation

The Boss about to release the payload. My camera wasn’t really good enough to handle it.

There was this awesome rainbow going on right after launch

Go, COSI, go!

One of the Spider guys took this pretty sweet video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT6tnEPUQts. The balloon goes in front of the sun, which looks awesome!!

12:18 PM: COSI has launched and the ascent is looking good!!! Pictures of the launch are pending, for now, here are some pictures captured by the CSBF cameras on the gondola during and after launch:

Looking up at the balloon immediately before the gondola was released from the launch vehicle.

Looking up at the balloon sometime after launch and after emerging from the low level clouds.

A view of Mount Erebus as COSI emerges from the clouds.

A view of Mount Erebus and Mount Terror from above.

Not sure how high the balloon is at this point, but yes, you can see the atmosphere and the dark space above. How wicked is that?!

1:15 PM: COSI is officially at float altitude. We’ll be spending the next couple of days using the line-of-sight telemetry link to monitor the instrument. All looks pretty good so far! 

It’s a harsh continent

The last launch attempt was tough. We got so close. Closer than most of us on COSI have ever been to launching a payload that we have worked on. In fact, we got past a point that CSBF said there was no going back from, but then the situation turned a bit dire and we had to back off.

As mentioned many times before, COSI is flying on the super pressure balloon. We’re the first science flight on this type of balloon (although, they’ve flown a science flight on a predecessor many years ago). The super pressure balloon could be the next best thing to happen to scientific ballooning; it promises 100 day flights, which means you get that much closer to mimicking a satellite for a small fraction of the cost. The success of the COSI/SPB flight this season is somewhat pivotal for the SPB progress in the world of science.

But, there’s a catch. Not only do these balloon cost a couple million dollars each, but they are extremely delicate and thus difficult to launch. Looking back at past posts, I realize that we’ve never really described the launch procedure, so here it goes (this is SPB specific).

 

The total time dedicated to preparing to launch is about 8 hours. First, the science team and the CSBF electronics group does their pre-flight checkout. We visually inspect all of the connections on the gondola, we put up a radioactive source to check if our detector lines widths look good, we send commands through each of our telemetry links… we pretty much check every aspect of our system to make sure it’s working as expected. We’ve done this a few times now so it takes just under an hour to go though the 70 item on the list. Chris Field works in parallel checking the SIP (Science Instrument Package), the termination electronics, the batteries and solar power and a lot of other things that I don’t know about.

After we’ve gone through our respective lists, we inform the riggers that we’re ready to be lifted. We get help from the riggers to roll the gondola out the door of our weatherport and out onto the porch. They come over with the launch vehicle, The Boss, and proceed to pick us up. We end up sitting at the end of the weatherport driveway for about another hour while the parachute is hooked up, the termination is tested, and while we check the rest of our telemetry links (the openport iridium link doesn’t work indoors). Then, we’re ready to be moved to the launch pad (this is where we’re currently at while I write this post. Clio is blogging live about the current launch attempt, but we’re on a weather hold for the moment…).

The Boss starts the slow trudge out to middle of the perfectly groomed launch pad, which has been kept in pristine condition by Fleet Ops here in McMurdo. At this point, the CSBF weather guy, Chris Schwantes, has decided which direction the winds will be consistently coming from and thus has chosen the proper direction to lay out the balloon. The balloon and parachute are laid out behind the launch vehicle upwind of the payload so that once the balloon is inflated and released it will sail up to position itself about 600 ft above the payload.

The laying out of the balloon isn’t so simple. This thing is huge. It measures just under 400 ft in diameter once it’s completely inflated at float. It’s stored in a box where the combined weight is 9000 lbs. The balloon itself is only 1.5 mil thick and weighs 5000 lbs. Taking the balloon out of the box is difficult enough, putting the balloon back in the box (in the event of a scrubbed launch attempt) is even crazier. It’s actually a rule at CSBF: super pressure balloons cannot go back in their box. So when that balloon was laid out last Friday during out last launch attempt, CSBF told us that this was it, there was no going back. We were thrilled.

An added complication of the super pressure balloon is the electronics and valves contained in the top of the balloon. This weight makes this inflation process more involved. A smaller balloon, referred to as the tow balloon, is inflated first and attached to the top of the super pressure for the duration of the inflation. Once the inflation of the tow balloon is compete, then the inflation of the main balloon can begin. The balloon is held down on a spool during the inflation, and only once the inflation is complete and the winds are calm and everything else is right, the balloon will be released from the spool and lift itself above the launch vehicle. Because the winds are never quite perfect, the Boss will have to be maneuvered to stay underneath the balloon before the release of the gondola. Then, up up and away!

Our launch attempt last week got us all the way up to the inflation of the tow balloon.  Unfortunately, the winds had changed direction during the few hours that it took to get the launch vehicle, parachute and balloon in position. By the time the tow balloon was inflated, there were cross winds with gusts up to 8 or 9 kts (3-4 kts average is the max for our super pressure launch). The four riggers who were holding the tow balloon in place were doing all they could just to not have it blow away. Seeing the wind direction, the magnitude of the gusts, and the difficulty in just having the tow balloon barely stable, CSBF made the decision that it would be too risky to try and inflate the super pressure. The launch was called off and the tow balloon was released.

At this point, we didn’t really know the significance of the scrubbed launch. The balloon was out, but the launch was cancelled. If we were to take what CSBF said earlier with all seriousness, that would mean that the super pressure balloon was done with (we have no spare). Within the hour, most things were pretty much cleared up. CSBF decided that it would be worth the effort to try and put the balloon back in the box (they got permission from headquarters to attempt to launch with the same balloon again), so not all was lost. It took 10 riggers over an hour of strenuous, delicate work to get the 5000 lbs balloon back. Everyone is crossing their fingers that nothing was damaged in the process and we’re going to go ahead and try to launch again. Today is the day.

If you have a no-wind dance, now’s the time to get moving.

Fourth (real) launch attempt

Lately, the weather hasn’t been so great, but we’ve been asked to show for launch attempts anyway. Sometimes the weather has been so bad we haven’t even rolled out! The rationale behind showing anyway is that we really don’t want to risk missing a launch opportunity. I think today is the fourth actual attempt, depending on how we count them.

We’re hopeful for this one, mostly because the weather guy predicted very good weather for today, but also partly because of the penguin we saw at LDB yesterday. Why is the penguin relevant? The day before ANITA launched, there was a penguin wandering around LDB. So, if there was a penguin here yesterday, maybe that means we’ll launch today!

Anyway, we left McMurdo at 3 AM and are aiming for an 11 AM launch. Updates will come…

5 AM: We’ve rolled out and are hanging from the Boss.

COSI getting hooked up to the Boss

6:00 AM: Winds aren’t looking so great right now. We’re on a weather hold for a bit.

9:30 AM: Still waiting for the weather to improve…

11:30 AM: And it’s been scrubbed. The winds are just too high. We’re trying again tonight.

Second Launch Attempt

We’re aiming for a launch around 7AM – 8AM this morning. I’ll try to update here periodically!

12:00 AM: We all met at McMurdo to head out to LDB (except for McBride, who has spent the past two nights on the cot at LDB for some reason). We were supposed to sleep all afternoon, but I’m not sure how well any of us did…thankfully, everyone seems pretty awake thanks to a combination of adrenaline and coffee!

2:30 AM: We’ve rolled out! The gondola is now hanging from the launch vehicle, and we’re doing our telemetry checks.

The riggers rolling the gondola out. Brent made sure to play the song Roll Out, on our playlist just for this occasion!

Derek getting ready to hook the gondola up to the Boss (the launch vehicle)

Attaching the gondola to the Boss

Carolyn and Brent waiting with the back panel while the riggers finish

Me, Brent, McBride and Alex working on software: the GSE, the distributor, or the GRB monitor program

3:30 AM: ANITA planned to send up a little balloon, called HICAL, to help calibrate their instrument. Because the balloon and instrument are small, they can launch it without the Boss. We went out to see them launch, but unfortunately there was a mishap with the balloon: it leaked! Right after getting launched, it fell back down. The CSBF guys had to wrestle it to the ground.

The ANITA team watching the HICAL launch

A close-up of the HICAL balloon

The payload had just dropped to the ground

Two CSBF guys chasing down the payload

The riggers trying to wrestle the balloon back down

Hopefully their calibration instrument is okay! They have a backup balloon, so they’ll be able to try again.

Meanwhile, we’re still testing telemetry. Chris is testing out the parachute and balloon terminate commands.

COSI hanging on the Boss

There’s a live stream here: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm. Click on Operations Video to see it. That being said, it’s probably not that interesting until the actual launch…

5:30 AM: We are on the flight line! The Boss is on the launch pad, and the balloon is heading there now.

The riggers getting the balloon out of the weatherport

The super pressure balloon is giant and took up almost our entire weather port. The normal balloons are much smaller than this one.

COSI on the flight line!

Brent was really excited about the prospect of driving around in the cart

They’re bringing out the spool. The spool is to hold the balloon down while it’s inflating.

5:45 AM: Apparently the winds are currently a little too high for the super pressure balloon. We’re proceeding for now, but it sounds like the winds will have to come down for this launch to happen.

7:45 PM: The launch is on! CSBF is laying out the balloon. Inflation is starting imminently!

The parachute and the Boss

CSBF hooking up the parachute

LDB from the launch pad. It looks so far away!

COSI hanging

Carolyn and I headed over to check out the balloon. It was really cool to see it get unpacked and laid out.

Starting to take the balloon out of the box

The balloon wrapped around the spool

Laying out the balloon

Laying out the balloon some more

The balloon laid out almost all the way

The top of the balloon

Carolyn and I getting super excited!

8:50 AM: And it got too windy. Something went wrong with the tow balloon and they had to let it go. I’m not really sure what the plan is going forward.

11:40 AM: After a nap and some time to process, here’s a final update for today. CSBF put the balloon back in the box, and we will use the super pressure balloon for our next launch attempt. The weather probably isn’t good enough for a launch attempt tomorrow. I’m not sure when the next attempt will be.

6th time’s the charm!

ANITA had their 6th roll out this morning and after a few snags they made it out to the flight line and had a gorgeous launch! For many of us, on COSI and ANITA, this was the first balloon launch we’ve witnessed live. It was remarkable.

For safety reasons, spectators (but only those associated with LDB are allowed) need to stay over 500 feet from the launch pad. People that was deemed non-essential personnel, like ourselves, watch the whole process from just outside of our buildings. The balloon inflation takes about an hour to complete.

Some of the COSI, ANITA, and SPIDER groups waiting around for the inflation to be complete.

I decided it was a good time for a snow angle.

McBride, Brent, and Clio standing in front of the ANITA payload on the launch pad with the balloon fully inflated and ready for release.

ANITA in the middle of the launch pad with the balloon inflating beside it. It looks tiny from here!

The balloon doesn’t swell up to its full size (over 400 ft in diameter) until it reaches its float altitude (110,000 ft).

Right after the balloon was released. You could hear the whoosh/flapping of the polyethylene even from where we were. It was pretty surreal.

The Boss maneuvers to stay underneath the balloon before the release of the gondola.

The ANITA payload after launch. It’s just itty bitty.

GO ANITA GO!!!

Penguin Sighting

Some of us were lucky enough to see a penguin the other day! Alex, Brent, McBride and I were in the van heading back to McMurdo, and saw the penguin between LDB and Willy Field. He was pretty far away, so my pictures aren’t that great. Alan, Martin and Abby were on a later van and were able to get much closer!

The ANITA team came out yesterday for a launch attempt and told us that the penguin was hanging around LDB. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen him today. The later it gets in the season, the closer penguins get to McMurdo, so hopefully we’ll get to see some more! Given that we’re still waiting for ANITA to launch before we can launch, it looks like we’re all going to be around for awhile.

Fun in McMurdo

We’re waiting for our next launch opportunity. It’s a little unclear when that will be, as there are currently two balloons ready to launch: us and ANITA. ANITA rolled out today, but the launch attempt got cancelled because the weather wasn’t quite good enough. We’ll see what happens in the next couple of days.

Though we are ready to launch, we’re using this time to take more calibration data and fix up our ground software. But as our instrument and the flight software seem to be working pretty well, it means we have some time to do fun things! (And in my case, time to write about some of the fun things we’ve done since arriving here).

Observation Hill:

Ob Hill is a hill right next to McMurdo that offers some great views from the top. It’s a bit of a steep climb, but not that long. We headed up there as a group a couple of weeks ago, and I went again the other day. The views were incredible!

Mt Erebus from the top of Ob Hill. We can see the other side of Erebus from LDB.

Looking down at McMurdo from the top of Ob Hill

We could see LDB way out in the distance

McBride taking a rest halfway up the climb, with some pretty sweet mountains in the background

Me at the top of Ob Hill

When I climbed up a couple of days ago, the clouds and mountains looked super awesome

Pressure Ridges:

The pressure ridges are ridges of ice formed by the sea ice and the permanent ice pushing against each other. LDB offered tours that we could sign up for, so a bunch of us went. Unfortunately, we couldn’t all sign up for the same tour. I went with Carolyn and McBride, and Brent, Alan, Martin, and Abby went a couple days later. We drive past the pressure ridges on the way to LDB every day, but they look much more impressive up close. We also got to see some seals, which is always exciting.

  

Carolyn and I at the pressure ridges

Observation Tube:

 Ob Tube is a metal tube that goes through the ice and ends in a tiny room that looks out into the ocean. It’s a really neat way for people to look at the ocean and the bottom of the ice. To get to the bottom, we had to climb down a “ladder”, which was really just rungs sticking out of the wall. Towards the bottom, the rungs turn into a sketchy rope ladder (which was pretty short, so it wasn’t that sketchy). It’s pretty cramped, and Alex said he got a little claustrophobic. Because the space is so small, only one person can go down at a time. We had to wait over an hour for our turns. Looking out at the ocean and the bottom of the ice was so amazing that it was definitely worth the wait!

There’s a little “apple” next to the entrance to ob tube. It’s not heated, but it was a good shelter from the wind.

The view from the entrance to ob tube. The clouds were pretty epic that day.

Looking down ob tube from the top

Here’s some photos of all of us climbing into ob tube:

The bottom of the ice from inside ob tube. Unfortunately my camera wasn’t that great at taking pictures of the ocean through a window.

The bottom of the ice and the ocean

Hut Point:

Discovery hut, out on hut point, is a short walk from McMurdo, and Brent hadn’t been yet, so he and I went last night. We saw some seals, as well as the hole they use to come up from the water. One of the seals was younger than the rest, and kept moving around, which was pretty cute.

So many seals!

The seal hole in the ice

The sassy young seal, as Brent called it

Today Brent decided to have a Christmas party, thinking we’d all be too distracted by watching ANITA launch to get any work done. Even though the launch didn’t happen, we still had a good time playing Christmas music, eating too many cookies, and decorating our Christmas tree!

Our Christmas party spread, consisting of cookies and cider from McMurdo, chocolate from Steve Boggs, and reese’s and holiday themed goldfish from McBride’s daughter.

McBride’s daughter also sent him Irish whiskey. It seemed like a very appropriate addition to the care package.

Brent’s sister sent us an adorable Christmas tree made out of paper. It also came with ornaments, and instructions on how to decorate it.

Carolyn and McBride putting the garland on the tree

Alan adding an ornament to the tree

The tree all decorated! We think it’s awesome 🙂 Thanks, Brent’s sister!

First Launch Attempt

Carolyn and I have fallen a bit behind with the blog lately, mostly due to a lot of work and stress leading up to our compatibility test and hang test. These tests are to verify all the communications are functioning and make sure that our instrument is works as expected when put together with everything that CSBF adds. We passed those tests last Friday and Saturday, and are now ready to launch!

Over the weekend, we had heard that there would be bad weather until late this week, so we thought we had a few days to really calibrate before we would be asked to show. This morning at around 10am, we found out that tomorrow is a possible launch day in terms of weather, and CSBF told us we would be showing for a launch attempt. We’ll be rolling out at 3:30 AM on Tuesday, Dec 9 (McMurdo time, which is also New Zealand time).

Since this morning, we have been finishing up everything that absolutely has to happen before launch. Because we are rolling out so early, we’ll be starting to check that everything is completely ready to go at around 1am. We decided to just stay at LDB all night to make sure we finish everything.

We hooked up the pump for the cryostat’s final pump down. Hooking it up when it’s on the gondola is quite a challenge!

Carolyn climbed up on the gondola for (possibly) the last time to permanently stick our temperature sensors in place with thermal epoxy.

McBride napping to prepare for the long night and day ahead. He made himself a bed out of foam and a pillow out of bubble wrap. Brent was using the cot, so McBride had to get creative!

Now that I’ve summarized the afternoon, I’ll be trying to update the rest of this launch attempt in real time (NASA will also be doing updates  here: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm)

9:30 PM: Carolyn found the rest of the chocolate that Steve left for us. Brent started the awesome COSI playlist he made to get us all super excited about COSI and launch!

It was really exciting to realize how much chocolate Steve left us.

12:00AM: (written by Carolyn)
I stole Clio’s camera (She’s taking short nap on the cot. If you’ve seen Clio without much sleep then you’ll understand why we approve so highly of this.) because the view outside was breathtaking, as usual. What a nice day to try and launch!

Looking towards the north at Black Island.

A view of the long drop and the launch pad. We should be out there in about 6 hours!

You can see how excited I am. Most of it is nerves and the rest is the lack of sleep.

1:00 AM: (written by Clio)

1:00 AM means it’s time to start the going through the roll out checklist! The checklist is basically a list of things to do before rolling out to the flight line. We need to make sure that all systems are working properly, so we’ll do things like confirm everything is screwed in right, triple check for grounding issues, and check that everything can be turned on and off without problems.

Even though we aren’t rolling out until 3:30, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to go through the checklist, as we’ve never gone through it as thoroughly as we want to for launch.

Before starting the checklist, Carolyn had to perform a crucial task: putting teflon tape lightning bolt shaped speed strips on the gondola. According to Steve Boggs, these are absolutely necessary for thermal reasons.

The checklist is very official. It goes on a clipboard.

Carolyn and McBride checking PDU and flight computer connections, as well as grounding issues.

2:30 AM:

The CSBF guys showed up and brought us pizza! We got an update from the weather guy: the weather doesn’t look promising, but for now we’re going to proceed anyway. It’s hard to forecast here, so I guess you never know.

Thanks for the good luck wishes, CSBF!

Brent, Alan, Alex and McBride enjoying a quick pizza break

McBride lays down his foam and bubble wrap bed for another nap, even though no one’s using the cot. Why? Because cots are for wimps! Alex is amused.

4:15 AM: We’re officially buttoned up to roll out. We put on the side panels and Carolyn taped the rest of the temperature sensors in place.

Carolyn attaching temperature sensors across the gondola

Chris, our payload engineer, getting his stuff all ready to go with help from Bobby and Mike (all from CSBF)

The last side panel is on! We are all buttoned up and ready to go!

4:40 AM: We’ve rolled out and are checking to make sure all our systems are running normally. We had some issues with noise last week, so we are making sure they aren’t coming back. So far, it looks good!

The riggers rolling the gondola outside

The launch vehicle, called the Boss, getting ready to come pick us up

Everyone watching the GSE: the software that tells us how the instrument is doing

5:40 AM: The Boss lifted up our gondola, and our gondola is going to be hanging there for the next 20ish minutes while we check some more things. We need to make sure that we’re still receiving data and can still send commands, in addition to anything else on the checklist that I’ve forgotten about (that’s why the checklist exists!). Chris has to check out some of his stuff as well. Once we confirm everything is ok, we’ll start heading over to the launch pad.

There’s still no weather data, because the weather stations around here are down. If we don’t ever get any data, then they will have to cancel the launch. We weren’t expecting to launch until 10am, though, so there’s still a chance.

I’m starting to feel pretty wiped out, as is everyone else. I feel like I’m having a lot of trouble forming coherent sentences (so hopefully this section of the blog makes sense…). Hopefully I’ll have the energy to keep posting! Maybe after a nap….

The riggers attaching the gondola to the Boss

Chris in front of the gondola, which has been all hooked up

The Boss is turning around so that the gondola is facing away from the weather port for Chris’s tests

7:30 AM: During my nap over the past hour, the launch got called off due to weather. There might be another launch opportunity on Thursday, so we’ll see how that goes!