National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Now that we’re actually getting closer to launch (woo-hoo!), things are getting busy again. There’s a lot of excitement in the air as we move into the final stages of putting everything together and testing it. I know, it seems like they’re always testing something! Imagine being in my shoes.

Today they’re testing the solar paddles, which will collect the Sun’s light and keep me running. I get a big inspection tomorrow, then they’ll make me cold again and ship me off to Tsukuba next week. I get another adventure!

At Tsukuba, they’ll be spin-balancing me — I have to be perfectly aligned for launch! They measure the “moment of inertia” – I think this means they make sure I don’t wobble!

Launch simulation totally owns! We ran through two fake launches today, including all of what will happen when I really go up. It’s getting exciting. They had a couple problems with the automatic procedure the first time, but all of my stuff worked just right! I guess that’s why they do these simulations, huh? Gotta make sure everything works before the real thing.

I’m getting psyched for liftoff! I sure wish they’d tell me a real launch date; I’m getting tired of waiting. All they’ll say right now is “late June.” Sigh.

Boy, did that take a long time. Those guys were here until 2AM, making me run through all kinds of tests, and even trying out a little change to some of my software. They say it’s a fix they want to have ready just in case my temperature controller goes out of whack in orbit. Like that’s gonna happen! Seems like a waste of time to me, but everybody seems to be fixated on making sure everything works.

Overnight they took away the source of X-rays I was looking at all day, and made me stare at darkness. Don’t tell anyone, but it never looks completely dark to me! A couple times a minute I see a really bright flash. They said that’s from cosmic rays that just happen to go through me and into my detectors. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s pretty easy to tell the cosmic rays from the real X-rays. Everyone says there’ll be a lot more cosmic rays (they call them “background”) in orbit, without the atmosphere to protect me, but they still wanted to measure how much it happens down here. Whatever.