How long has it been since I posted an update? So long, I'm actually scared to look. And I don't really have an excuse. I certainly haven't been too busy.

Not that the mission isn't doing great things. But there just hasn't been much testing. An occasional SoftSim run, some targeting with the RA in preparation for a delivery, and that's about it. But it seems the more time I have, the less I actually do.

But what has Phoenix been up to lately. We've been trying like the dickens to get an ice sample into TEGA. Having worked around some operational problems with TEGA itself, we finally attempted a sample acquisition/delivery late last week. We got the sample, but it froze to the back of scoop! So we tired again the other day, and guess what, it stuck to the back of the scoop again!

I'll let you know when we figure out how to get a sample into a science instrument.

Landing day is 29 days away as I type this message. Where there is a rush to get that last test in, to check off that last validation box and verify that last piece of code, this is also the only time we have to take some time off.

I took a second week off, and then worked the second shift last week. With three engineers, that's been the cycle the last couple of months, one off, one on days, and the last on nights. We have had the RA team here almost non-stop. MECA had a week completely unto itself.

RAC and SSI provide plenty of tests that we can drop in between sequences, while the other team is setting up for the next round. We have one more ORT left. It will be short at only three days, covering EDL and Sols 0, 1 and 2 (Sols being a day on Mars). This week will be used to prep for that test.

The boss is on vacation this week, and one of the other engineers is working nights. I'm providing backup to the third engineer as he's on console running with the hardware. I'm also running simulations. And the tests keep rolling in.

Ahh, back from vacation and what is my thanks? That's right, the 4-12 shift. With only four people working in the PIT, one of whom is the boss (so he's not going to work the late shift!) we don't have a lot of man hours to provide to the mission.

There is ALWAYS more testing. So it comes down to prioritizing, and quite often that means two shifts are required. The only fair way to assign which engineer gets it is to rotate. This week, I get to monitor MECA testing. It's pretty boring really, the MECA teams tells me which sequence to run, I run it, and give them the results when the test is done. Things get interesting only when things go wrong.

Which they do. So boring is good. It gives me time to catch up on my correspondence.

What a crazy couple of weeks it's been around here. We have been running all sorts of tests, practically day and night. Most of the instrument flight software has been updated, so we had to run all the FVTs again. However, we have a characterization test coming up next week, so we've also had to test all the sequences for this mini-ORT. Oh yeah, and the characterization test does not use the updated FSW (flight software). It's not an overly painful process to switch out the FSW, but it's one more detail to keep track of, and one that would invalidate a test if run using the wrong code.

Last time I mentioned the MECA Wet Chemistry test that we did during the ORT. Due to a hardware issue, MECA could not be configured to receive the sample. Unfortunately, MECA did not perform any wet chem experiments during this ORT. The remainder of the ORT played out and the Science Operations Center is once again quiet.

Testing continues, with the RA occupying much of our time. We have had to dig a 50cm deep trench with the arm. We in the PIT actually dug the first 25cm by hand, as this would take the arm about a week to dig out. As it was, the last 25cm took 3 or 4 days, including all the imaging in between each layer. Last week, and into this week, the RA will go through a sample acquisition and delivery to each of the 8 TEGA ovens or cells. All these are to full high level testing requirements, designed to validate how well the arm performs these critical tasks. So far, so good.

Well, it took a little time for the TEGA to analyze the data from the bakeout, but I finally got word. Another 10 percent of water was cooked away from inside the ovens.

We're scheduled to run yet another bakeout test here in the PIT this week, in preparation for three runs on the spacecraft the week after Thanksgiving. TEGA needs the level of water to drop low enough to not interfere with their scans, but that's not completely dry. We'll see how much closer we can get after next week.

The PIT has been quite steady this month. I mentioned some MECA testing in my last post, and we've been doing a lot more since then. We've been running tests to characterize the instrument; getting the focus position of the OM nailed down and understanding the nuances of the wet chemistry cells.

We also have been testing the RA unstow sequences with the lander at different tilt angles and orientations. Everything has been running quite smoothly. Things are looking good for the upcoming ORT.

With the arm being a single-point of failure for the mission (arm fails, mission fails) most of our testing is done with the RA. As TEGA, SSI and RAC were all built here at UA, the teams are close and so we do a lot of testing on those instruments too. MECA was built by JPL, and so far the testing hasn't been very vigorous. Recently, we have starting doing a lot more MECA verification. The first round of major testing was nailing down the Optical Microscope (OM) focus position. During the ORT we did get some OM images, but they were not in focus. A couple of the MECA team members came up to work with the RA team during its testing of sample delivery to MECA. In conjunction, they did additional testing, by moving the lens closer and further from the sample until we attained in-focus pictures. Our Engineering Model (EM) is different from the Flight Model (FM), so the positions won't be the exactly the same, but they'll be close, and we now know how to find the position and what the images should look like.

Yesterday we ran a 12 HOUR TEGA test in preparation for a run on the FM this weekend. I'll let you know the details and how the tests went next week after thr run on the spacecraft.

Now that ORT6 is over, and ORT7 is several weeks away, we are continuing to run tests for the various instruments. Last week and this week are dedicated to testing how effectively the RA can acquire and deliver samples to TEGA and MECA, using different materials. We have already done the very fine baghouse dirt (a few microns), and are in the process of testing a coarser grain (up to 3mm) as well as a rocky substance that requires the arm to using the RASP, or Rapid Active Sampling Package. This comprises the ISAD, or Icy Sample Acquisition Device. this is effectively a Dremel tool bit on the backside of the scoop that drills into the rock or ice sample, filling the scoop with (hopefully) enough sample to analyze. This testing goes under the category of Payload Verification and Validation (PVV). The RA has many requirements, meaning, lots of testing. We have started to do some testing with MECA as well, but I'll get into that in my next entry.

As I said, we have been preparing for the upcoming ORT (Operational Readiness Test) for the last several weeks. A lot of the software testing has been done, and we're mainly fine-tuning the tests at this point. The work is now shifting to more of the physical setup.

This round of ORTs will include some hefty RA work, just to prepare for the test. The Arm will be digging a large trench, around 20cm deep and about a meter square. Several of us spent much of Friday prepping the digging bin with different soils. We managed to get quite dirty doing so! After we put the bin back in place, we spent time arranging the area around the lander, including getting rocks of appropriate sizes AND abundances for the region we are studying.

The PIT crew (as we call ourselves) had an impromptu meeting the other day. We occasionally do so, and we discuss whatever we wish. The atmosphere is always laid back and casual, lots of joking and teasing.

Our boss got a bit philosophical on us this time. He mentioned that running the tests was getting a bit routine: Bring up the system, run the test, shutdown, process the data and then do it again.

Interesting week so far. Some guys from Lockheed Martin in Denver came down to do some troubleshooting on the PTL, the Payload Testbed Lab. This is our rack of computers we use to simulate the spacecraft, and run our tests. They also brought out the OPUS rack. The Odyssey/Phoenix UHF System, is another rack of computers that simulates the Odyssey spacecraft's telecom system. We will now be able to run a test, uplink that data to OPUS and then transmit that data to the Ground Data System. This is just like Surface Operations. Of course, no data will actually be sent through the air via radio waves, it's all done using cables. Transmitting data over the air could be hazardous to our health.

This week I spent working on Robotic Arm (RA) Verification and Validation (VandV). Each instrument must meet certain requirements and each must be tested. This batch of tests involved showing the RA is capable of moving the Thermal and Electric Conductivity Probe (TECP), located at the end of the arm, in a smooth, straight line. This is to meet the requirement on precision in insertion and extraction of the probe into the ground, without damaging the probe leads. You can view a picture of the TECP, and the other instruments, on the Phoenix website.

The test involved moving the RA into four separate positions, close to the lander deck, high and low, and outstretched, high and low. We then set up a video camera and a plane background and recorded the motion as the RA was directed to move 10 or 20 centimeters. The video will be reviewed by JPL to determine if the motion is smooth enough.

This weekend, I was invited to participate in a Star Party at a local elementary school. The librarian there is amazing. She has a fairly large budget, and has purchased a few telescopes, and other astronomy related paraphernalia. She also contacted the University of Arizona to get support and she has contacts with local amateur astronomers. About once a month she organizes these events for the children and families that attend her school. I've been going for about three years now, alternating between running a telescope and running an activity that is related to Mars and my job. It's so much fun. The parents and kids have a blast, and hopefully learn something too. I get to interact with people and they ask some really tough questions as they don't always have the information and knowledge I take for granted. Sometimes they have more, and that makes the questions even more difficult.

To everyone reading my blog, please don't hesitate to post a comment or a question. I will do my best to read and answer all of them.

Errata: Misspelled a word last time. There are no such things as "simulatories." It should have read "simulators." Sorry about that.

Anyway, it's Monday again and I already debugged an issue with a recent test. The spacecraft and payload (instrument) teams will be running checkouts on the various instruments starting today. One will be on the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA).

The tests we ran last week on the simulator had some issues. Basically, that sequence sets some parameters that the hardware uses, but setting those same parameters in the simulator involves a little more work. I had to compare the various runs, and that's where I discovered the cause of the issue and the solution to it. This is why we run tests on the sim and Engineering Models (EMs) before running the sequences on the Flight Models (FMs).

I've been back to work for a week and a half now. Last week was spent compiling data from Robotic Arm (RA) and TEGA tests. We have to certify our software simulatories, and to do so involves a lot of data crunching. We have to compare tests run against the hardware to those run against the sims and document any differences. That way people higher up than me can determine if the sims need to be fixed.

This week has been spent testing sequences for the upcoming Operational Readiness Test (ORT), set for the first week of October. Each instrument has to have many sequences tested and "on the shelf" for later use. They write'em, my job is to test'em.