Well, the latest round of Operational Readiness Tests/Training is over and we finished with moderate success.

The aim for this round was nominal operations, meaning no one was intentionally causing hiccups to test the science team's ability to react. This all centered around a sample delivery to TEGA. That didn't happen. The trench came out beautifully, with multiple layers and different colors; brown, red, brown, yellow and brown. This may not sound interesting, but very few people knew about this, and the team was able to get nice color images that match up very nicely.

From that trench, the RA was able to acquire a sample and get into position to deliver to TEGA. But twice, as TEGA was prepping to receive the sample, it faulted. So last week was dedicated to debugging this issue. It only took a day, but we figured it out. Current limit was set too low, a change from the default that someone made. Quite embarrassing. But we were able to test both sequences from the ORT and show that both worked. Or would have, anyway.

Stay tuned as I have some other stories from the ORT. If you have a question about any aspect of the ORT, please ask. It's a fascinating look at Mars Mission operations.

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