12/24/2022
I'm so so happy to say that SPIDER is in the stratosphere! On the third day of consecutive launch attempts, we had favorable winds, and SPIDER took off on the long awaited flight to observe the CMB on December 22, 2022 at 10:26 AM, a couple minutes before the austral summer solstice. What a way to ring in the summer.
We are all exhausted, I've had less sleep this week than probably any other week of my life. The first ~18 hours are frantically working to get all systems operational before we lose the Line of Sight communications over the horizon. Following back to back launch attempts, it has been a grueling week. Now we've commenced 24 hour monitoring of the payload with the text message of data bits we get every 15 minutes!
More stories and photos to come.
It was such an exciting day! I could hardly get any work done, because I was checking so often. We are so proud of you and your team’s accomplishments. We are anxious to hear stories in person!
Congratulations! You've worked so long and hard for this. A day you'll never forget. Only get so many of those in a lifetime! Well done.