There will not be a telecom on Saturday or Sunday
Hej och god morgon (Hi and good morning),
Update Summary
It's been rainy hear again... well it was rainy here while we were trying to get the dress rehearsal of the flight and final NASA compliance completed. It is now a beautiful day.
We also got our first flight predictions. It looks like we currently may be only able to get a 10 hour flight if we were to launch on Sunday. Although the winds are starting to set up, they are still heading west into the Norwegian Mountains, and we have to cut down the balloons before we hit reach them.
So what does that mean? It means that with rain forecasted for Saturday, only a short flight that would not guarantee that we would get a conjunction with Van Allen, we've decided not to launch this weekend. We hope that if we can get NASA's final seal of approval, and good weather Monday morning, and then we'll really push to have a launch on August 10th.
There is a large numbered sunspot turning earthward. It also looks like a broad high speed stream is starting to reach the eastern limb of the Sun. Next week could bring some nice space weather!
News from Kiruna
Ground Weather:
http://www.irf.se/weather/
Temp.: 18 C
Wind speed: 2.3 m/s with a max of 4.3 m/s within the last five minutes or so. Currently Monday looks like a beautiful sunny day!
Temp.: 18 C
Wind speed: 2.3 m/s with a max of 4.3 m/s within the last five minutes or so. Currently Monday looks like a beautiful sunny day!
Precipitation (rain): 0.0 mm or so they claim...
Stratospheric weather:
The winds look like they haven't yet quiet set up. They are heading west and would only give us about a 10 hour flight at maximum.
Payloads up: First possible launch date August 10th
N/A
Payloads coming down:N/A
News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary
Summary
Nothing new except for the August 10th possible conjunction.
News from THEMIS:
From Xiaojia - I have put together a couple of close conjunctions (in L) between three probes of THEMIS and this BARREL balloon, assuming that you launch at early local morning on August 7th and the geographic location is stabilized at esrange. Currently the THEMIS Ops team are working on implementing special time-based particle burst captures (at 128 Hz) during these intervals.
News from Cluster:
From Fabien - There is sadly no conjunction possible for a possible launch on 10 August. But the first good one is on 12 August at around 11 UT. Which with 6 balloons total is a definite possibility.
News from Firebird:
Summary
From Alex Crew - As of noon Pacific yesterday, FIREBIRD had one last set of downlinks to make tonight, after which we anticipate clearing each spacecraft's memory during Friday's passes at which point they will automatically commence taking data. In the current data-taking mode, it is expected that the memory will last for approximately ~1 month of operations. I will update after we have completed the reset.
News from AeroCube 6
From Drew - AC6 will be running in high rate mode for all of August, meaning they will have 10 Hz sampling rate.
From Alex Crew - As of noon Pacific yesterday, FIREBIRD had one last set of downlinks to make tonight, after which we anticipate clearing each spacecraft's memory during Friday's passes at which point they will automatically commence taking data. In the current data-taking mode, it is expected that the memory will last for approximately ~1 month of operations. I will update after we have completed the reset.
News from AeroCube 6
From Drew - AC6 will be running in high rate mode for all of August, meaning they will have 10 Hz sampling rate.
Kiruna Magnetometer: http://www.irf.
There may have been something mid day-ish, but nothing really exciting.
Finish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/
It looks like yesterday before noon (UT) and closer to local midnight there may have been some EMIC waves at a few of the stations.
GOES Electron Flux:
GOES 2 MeV electrons appear to be returning to nominal values. However there is a lot of structure associated with them.
GOES Proton Flux:
GOES proton fluxes are remaining nominal.
Solar wind speed:
Vsw = 531.9 km/s
Solar proton density:
density = 4.6 protons/cm^3
Sun spot number:
80 - but there is one very big one (number 2396)
80 - but there is one very big one (number 2396)
Flare activity:
There is a 25% chance of an M-class flare, lets hope the sun spot gets more complex quickly, lets off a huge X-class flare, and then we have great weather on the 10th and have a massive geomagnetic storm while BARREL is up :).
Kp:
kp = 3 with a 24 hour max of kp = 5
SW magnetic field:
Bz = 4.3 nT south
Btotal = 7.4 nT
Coronal hole news
There are no large coronal holes currently on the Earthward facing side of the Sun.
Coronal hole news
There are no large coronal holes currently on the Earthward facing side of the Sun.
AE:
AE has been a bit active and it looks like there may have be a substorm starting.
Dst:
Dst is currently very quiet.
Swedish Phrase of the day:
From Chris
"jag ar pa semester": I'm on vacation Most of Sweden is on vacation during the month of August. But science, nor turn around winds, wait for anyone.
"jag ar pa semester": I'm on vacation Most of Sweden is on vacation during the month of August. But science, nor turn around winds, wait for anyone.
Hej då och bra kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna),
Alexa and the BARREL team.
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