Events

Commissioning Update From Aquarius PI Gary Lagerloef: Installing Service Packs
Today's activities were quite calm relative to the past two days. The Aquarius team first executed commands to power-up the radiometer's digital processing unit. This was followed by sequentially powering on the four Active Thermal Control (ATC) zones within the Aquarius instrument to bring them up to the planned operating temperatures. The telemetry readings were all positive throughout the day.
On Friday the team will upload a series of software patches. One of team explained to me last night that it is like downloading and installing a new 'service pack' for your favorite computer applications. In the case of Aquarius, these will apply some critical updates to the instrument flight software.
I regret that I have no fancy diagrams to share today. If you can read spanish, you might enjoy this interview that was published today in Argentina's Clarin newspaper.