From: Adrian Tang

Sent: August 5, 2018 2:46 AM

Subject: The ReckTangLE Mission!

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to give you some updates and such about all the exciting
things going on here. As I'm sure you know I'm leading a giant
balloon-based space mission to look at stratospheric water vapor and
pollutants and try to understand how it travels from equator to poles
(not well understood). There's a photo attached with me and the
spacecraft in the lab. The giant balloon goes right to the edge of
space (above 99.95% of the atmosphere) so it's still a "spacecraft"
since we need thermal control, flight guidance, telemetry, and
systems-management just like any other mission.

The NASA mission is called "ReckTangLE" for Reck-Tang Limbsounding
Experiment (the two PIs are Theodore Reck and Adrian Tang). Actually
Theodore Reck resigned from JPL last week and is at VDI now so I took
over managing that part of the program also, but I like the name so
we're keeping it. Attached is a fact sheet on the ReckTangLE.

Right now we have about 170 open technical issues to be fixed/solved
before the spacecraft ships out so I'm really busy working like 100+
hours a week.
The NASA transport packaging people want the payload from me Aug 10
(I'm negotiating this) which means I've really only got until Friday
to solve all these open issues, since after that it'll be packed up in
boxes and I can't even turn the payload hardware on anymore. I will
have some time at the launch site, but really there's not a lot of
equipment there, and even just a home depot is a 10 hour drive if I
need screws or a wrench, so it's a lot better to solve the issues here at JPL before it goes.

The ReckTangLE payload is shipping out from JPL once packed on Aug 22
and arriving at the launch site near Ft. Sumners New Mexico on Aug 29.
I will be going out also on the 29 (we're going to drive) and arriving the 30.
The really sensitive stuff... (THz receivers, wire-grids, and hot
spares for the computers) are going with me because the truck they
ship the spacecraft in is probably too rough of a ride. I thought
about flying but the TSA always screws up space instruments from JPL
during screenings (There's a history there). The THz receivers can't
be x-rayed so that seems like too much of a hassle to explain, even
with lots of NASA documentation.

Once there on Aug 30 we have about 10 days to get the spacecraft
re-assembled and ready for flight. Apparently the place is awful with
no civilization, no internet connections, and poor cellular service.
There is a dial up modem connection we can use to access email
(seriously!). The site isn't actually in Ft Sumners, it's about 50 mi
North in the low desert. The launch window opens up Sept 10, but we
have to wait for a day with perfect wind conditions (<6kts under 200
ft, <12kts under 2000 ft, and constant direction). The window remains open through to Oct 11.

We need to launch at about 9am in order for the sun to be right in the
sky. This is because we have a suntracker system which rotates the
payload to get us in the orientation we need to do our measurements.
The suntracker is a camera that tries to rotate the payload until the
sun is in a specific pixel of the image, however the sun needs to be
on the horizon for it to work properly. You can't get angular
information once the sun is high in the sky, only when it's at the
horizon, so that's why it's a 9am launch.

It takes about 4 hours to prep for launch (mostly readying the liquid
nitrogen and other cryogens) so after Sept 9 we get up about 4am every
day and get the spacecraft ready for flight. If winds are favorable,
we launch, otherwise we spend 4 hours taking it down again. The
cryogens can't stay in the payload for more than a few hours on the
ground or the condensation will damage the instruments which is why we
can't just leave it in flight configuration. So we will have to do
this day after day until we actually launch.

From there it'll fly at the edge of space for maybe 2-4 days
collecting limb sounding measurements on 3 key gasses, H2O, O3, and
NO2 taking vertically resolved temperatures, abundances, and pressure
distributions, which are very useful for understanding hydro-logical
transport of these components in the stratosphere. On about the 4th
day, we'll send a termination command and explosives will sever the
the balloon and deploy the parachute. We will then chase down the
falling payload in a NASA helicopter for recovery. We're expecting to
end up somewhere in northern Texas. The horror stories around JPL
about recovery efforts are endless, one payload ended up in a federal
prison, another ended up in a wildlife reserve. Should be fun...


If you're interested in the CSBF/NASA balloon program there's a really
great video on youtube that summarizes the program:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i47s97wBujY
B-Line to Space: The Scientific Ballooning Story is about NASA's Scientific Balloon program,
managed through NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and the Columbia ...

Also when ReckTangLE is ready to fly you can watch the launch live
here (I'll send an email if I'm not too panic-ed):
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-educational

The downrange camera is also publicly accessible here:
http://74.50.147.9/CgiStart?page=Single&Language=0

Once we're up in space a link will show up on this page that lets you
see our location and progress: https://towerfts.csbf.nasa.gov/
The mission will be listed under "JPL Remote" which is the ground server
name (not the mission name).

Hopefully this all works out...?
Cheers!
~Adrian


Update - Mon 2018-09-24 9:57 PM

Hi All,

Just so everyone has the full update, here's what's going on here in Ft
Sumner.

On Saturday during the launch of the Fireball2 mission there was an
anomaly with the launch system and the spool (a giant metal drum) went
flying in the air and landed about 50-60 ft away. No one was hurt but it
was a pretty dangerous looking situation. Also possibly related but not
sure, Fireball2 had a slow leak and spontaneously started loosing altitude
about 10 hours into their flight (meaning they did not meet their science
objectives). The SIFT flight two weeks ago also had a spontaneous loss of
altitude due to a leak and had to be prematurely terminated.

So NASA is conducting for two investigations, one into the spool problem
and one into the leak problem.

For the leak problem they need to go take samples of the balloon material,
check the setup at the balloon-making facility, as well as re-inspect the
remaining balloons for the campaign. While it's not a safety issue, this
will affect CSBFs' mission success rate so they are very reluctant to do
another flight until they are sure the balloons are okay.

For the spool failure CSBF has already received a new replacement spool
from the Texas facility, but NASA wants to form a review team and look at
the mechanical engineering as well as metallurgy before they allow any
more launch activities. The drum has 24 different 1/2" bolts sheered off
which they consider to be a serious failure.

In the briefing earlier they didn't say the campaign was scrubbed, but
they didn't seem optimistic either. We have bad weather Mon-Wed but
Thursday looks okay. The stratospheric turnaround winds are expected to
end by as early as the weekend or maybe early into next week, at which
point we won't be able to launch until March 2019 at the earliest. The 3
PIs on our balloon talked it over and we all feel we should at least wait
for the Thursday opportunity to see if anything happens. We of course
cannot launch until we receive a green light from both investigations.