As I mentioned in the last post, next week is a sort of mini-ORT. It'll last more than a week, but it's (supposedly) not 24 hours a day. This uber-test will run through the first 7 days on Mars, and we'll be executing every single sequence, exactly as they will run on Mars in a couple of months. This includes un-stowing the robotic arm, taking the full 360 degree SSI panorama, running through the MECA and TEGA characterizations, starting up the weathering monitoring and so on. Not much science in the first week, but a lot of imaging and checkouts and such. All in an effort to facilitate smooth operations for the rest of mission.

In order to prepare for this long test, the whole project has been busily working on testing the sequences in simulation, and then on the hardware when deemed necessary. In some ways, this has been quite difficult. Any time a tweak is made, a new test is often required. The type of test, though, is not always so intensive. One test essentially goes through the sequence checking for grammatical mistakes, while softsim actually runs the test much like a test on the hardware, just 3 times faster. The former runs rather quickly, while the later takes about an hour to run. I guess "mini" really refers to day to day run time, not so much in scope or preparation.

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