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Launch!

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.


Inflation began around 8:45 AM nzdt

Balloon released at 10:26 AM, takes about 90 minutes for filling the balloon. Photo: Steve Benton

Release! Photo: Steve Benton

Off she goes! Photo: Steve Benton
Cue tears of relief and happiness.

SPIDER climbs higher and dances with the tiny speck of a weather balloon

...

The 7th year grad students hugged and they cried,

While their Ph.D. research floated off to the sky. ...







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