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The Launch of a TIGER
And so
today was the day. Early in the morning, ANITA passed its power
system test and the decision was made to go ahead with the
launch. Bob Reddinger, the NSBF meteorologist said that the winds
would be low enough to launch, although he predicted that there would
be a short time with 10 - 15 knot gusts in the mid-afternoon. The
plan was made to begin launch preparations at 4:00 PM.
At 10:00 AM, the Boss came up to the porch of the
weatherport to begin hoisting the TIGER payload. After all the
necessary hoisting material was installed, TIGER was hoisted at around
10:45 and the solar arrays were soon attached to the bottom of the
gondola. After testing the instrument and breaking for lunch, the
ballast hoppers were installed and tested. The official okay
concerning weather came from Bob Reddinger at 1:15 and the Boss slowly
began rolling out and up the hill to the launchpad. By 1:30, we
were on the launchpad and ready to go.
After running through a checkout, both TIGER and
ANITA gave the official okay for launch. The balloon was rolled
out at around 3:00 PM. Inflation began about a half hour
later. Then, just as Bob Reddinger had predicted, the winds began
to pick up. Although it was a little scary for those of us
involved in the project, it was pretty exciting for the small army of
spectators that gathered to view the launch.
Speaking of which, there was quite a circus out
there on the launchpad. Our loyal group of fans (who would ever
think that a balloon group would ever come equipped with its own band
of cheerleaders) had a vast array of props and cheers rehearsed for the
whole launch process.
And so, at approximately 5:08 PM, without a hitch,
the TIGER / ANITA / ARIA payload was launched aboard a 40 million
cubic-foot balloon over Williams Field in Antarctica. By 6:15,
the payload had risen to 47,000 feet, by 7:00, 78,000 feet, by 7:45,
112,000 feet. An initial float altitude of around 132,000 feet
was reached at about 9:30 PM.
And so now, the fun begins. We stay up all
night long monitoring the payload during these first critical hours
when we have a high-speed line-of-sight link to our onboard
computer. We decided to launch with our high-voltages off since
we noticed that there were problems with sparking during pressure
changes when we tested the instrument at Boeing back in July. And
so, our high-voltages were turned on around 9:30 PM giving way to a
beautiful of particles into the instrument. Of course, there were
already cosmic rays flooding in, but now we could actually see evidence
of their passage.
After a lot of discussion with the folks back at
Washington University and with our collaborators at Goddard Space
Flight Center and Caltech, the instrument was put into a mostly steady
state by about 1:30 PM on the 18th. This was pretty
convenient, because the balloon moved out of line-of-sight by about
2:00. We handed the controls over to the Wash U crew, gathered
supplies that we will need for operations to continue at the Crary Lab
back in McMurdo and headed back to town. Our next monitoring
shift began at about 5:00 PM. Bob Binns and I stayed on to
monitor the instrument, making one final change to our aerogel
Cherenkov detector before handing the controls over to Goddard at 1:00
AM.
And so both
TIGER and ANITA seem to be operating very nicely and everyone is quite
satisfied that this balloon flight will prove successful. As an
added bonus, Dr. Sven Geier from Caltech, the last of the TIGER crew,
arrived today. He will eventually take my place here on the harsh
continent. It is his first time here and he is excited to get out
and see everything. And so, without further ado...
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