There and back again
Feb. 18th, 2006 10:32 amSince Kevin has moved to a more-advanced figure skating class on Tuesday nights, there are no Saturday morning skating classes... for the first time since James began skating in 1999, seven years ago. So I celebrated by sleeping-in to 9:30 or so, two hours longer.
Yesterday, however, I was up at 4:30am and off to JPL, arriving there in time for a 9am day-long meeting. We have a Mars Polar Drill proposal team for a call for proposals due July for the 2011 Mars mission window. Our task: select our industry partner for the critical component (drill and sample handling). Otherwise, it's a refly of the 2007 Phoenix lander, same spacecraft and instruments, which itself is a refly of the crashed 1998 polar lander. We sat through three two-hour presentations, plus our own discussions, and it was contentious at times, but we have a tentative selection pending more data.
Tuesday, our Lunar Pathfinder proposal team will hear whether we're one of the four teams selected to prepare a full mission proposal due 3/22. If so, my travel plans in March may be scrambled again. I will be responsible for designing a mission and science operations plan, including the ground control stations at Ames. Which I'll probably base on those from Lunar Prospector in 1998, with updated IT, since we still have the secured links to the DSN and JPL.
Anyway... we were done by 6pm, then delayed at Burbank airport by bad weather. Met![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
patgreene at SJC airport at 10:30pm, and we went out for dessert and coffee. A long 18-hour day.
Today... household projects. Possibly go out withtenacious_snail tonight or maybe Monday night. Minigolf tomorrow afternoon, see akienm, then geocaching Monday with David and Kevin and cyan_blue...
Yesterday, however, I was up at 4:30am and off to JPL, arriving there in time for a 9am day-long meeting. We have a Mars Polar Drill proposal team for a call for proposals due July for the 2011 Mars mission window. Our task: select our industry partner for the critical component (drill and sample handling). Otherwise, it's a refly of the 2007 Phoenix lander, same spacecraft and instruments, which itself is a refly of the crashed 1998 polar lander. We sat through three two-hour presentations, plus our own discussions, and it was contentious at times, but we have a tentative selection pending more data.
Tuesday, our Lunar Pathfinder proposal team will hear whether we're one of the four teams selected to prepare a full mission proposal due 3/22. If so, my travel plans in March may be scrambled again. I will be responsible for designing a mission and science operations plan, including the ground control stations at Ames. Which I'll probably base on those from Lunar Prospector in 1998, with updated IT, since we still have the secured links to the DSN and JPL.
Anyway... we were done by 6pm, then delayed at Burbank airport by bad weather. Met
patgreene at SJC airport at 10:30pm, and we went out for dessert and coffee. A long 18-hour day. Today... household projects. Possibly go out with
tenacious_snail tonight or maybe Monday night. Minigolf tomorrow afternoon, see akienm, then geocaching Monday with David and Kevin and cyan_blue...
