This ORT has been going amazingly well so far. The science days are going off without a hitch. The days haven't been very intense for the most part, mostly standard SSI imaging, and weather measurements during morning, noon and night. The other night was a sample delivery to MECA OM, and that was cool. The RA acquired a sample, took some RAC images and then paused. During the pause, we actually switched out the boring baghouse dirt sample, and put in some interesting dirt (if you're into that kinda of thing). That way, the OM analysis would provide some data to analyze. Everything worked beautifully. Today is MECA Wet Chemistry Cell (WCl) delivery. I'll let you know how that goes next time.

Well, it's 1 a.m. (3 a.m. Maine time), and ORT 8 is off and running.

Thursday was a training day, so the science day is pretty light. This test starts off on Sol 20, meaning the 20th "day" on Mars. A Mars day is 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, so that really throws off the scheduling: every Earth day, we receive the data 40 minutes later. All the scientists and engineers (well, most of them) are at home asleep. Nothing happens on Earth while Phoenix is performing the day's science activities, i.e. imaging, digging, weather measurement and so forth.

As I said, today's science is pretty light, weather measurement of pressure and temperature, Lidar atmospheric measurements and standard SSI imaging of the environment. We'll take optical depth images of the Sun's intensity, which is needed to determine power status (we're a solar powered mission).

I'm sure things will get more exciting later in this seven day test.

Now I'm better, and back to work. I'm working the second shift this week so we can finish all the FVTs. We haven't had to run these in about 6 months. They were designed to test all the functionality of each instrument. We ran these tests each time a new version of Flight Software (FSW) came out. Now that the spacecraft is on its way, the FSW version is pretty much fixed. But each instrument has an executable that contains its specific code. These were recently updated, and we're testing them before they get transfered to Phoenix.

As I type, I'm monitoring one of the MECA tests. It's about 4 or 5 hours long, typical of the FVTs. It takes almost the whole week, running a second shift, to get through all the tests. This test checks the MECA Stage; basically a plate with dimples around the edge, in which a soil sample sits. The plate can rotate and translate, bringing the sample to the Atomic Force Microscope or the Optical Microscope.

MECA is easily the most complicated instrument, if by nothing else the sheer number of commands and telemetry.

I just wanted to check in with everyone, before it got any later. I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in awhile. I took vacation over the holidays which makes it hard enough to communicate. Then last week my grandfather passed away. I've been in Maine taking care of details with my family. I'll be back to work next week, where I'm sure things will start getting busy with preparations for the next ORT.