I’m in the spotlight today! We tested my solar paddles (the big solar panels that will get power for everything from the Sun), so they turned on a giant bank of lights to shine on them. It makes the room so bright! It makes me glad that I’ve got all of that stuff around me to keep me cold — all of that light feels really hot. I can only imagine what it will be like to face the Sun out there in space.
More good news! Back at SHI, there was some vibration coming from the mechanical cooler (the part that keep the neon cold for an extra-long time while I’m up in space). The team was worried that it would affect me. But here at ISAS, the vibration seems to be totally gone. They made some changes in wiring and stuff, so that probably fixed it.
I’ve really learned a lot about spaceflight missions, and it’s a huge adventure. There are so many people and places and pieces of equipment, and it all comes together in the end. Things don’t always go perfectly, but the people working on the mission come up with some really clever ways to make things work.
Now that I’m on the spacecraft, there’s a whole new battery of tests for the team to put me through! To be honest, sometimes I get tired of all of the tests. But I also know that this is the last round — I’m on the spacecraft, they’ll put me through these final checks, and then I’ll be ready to go into space. It all feels so close now… when I started this journal, it seemed like I wouldn’t be going into space for so long. And now I’m just months away. Crazy, huh?
Today the gang was really excited to find out that things are checking out okay. They’d been worried about my momentum wheels, which are used to rotate the spacecraft. You see, these four wheels spin at a constant speed to keep the spacecraft pointed in the right direction. To rotate the spacecraft, they slow down or speed up one or more of the wheels. Then, in order to conserve the total angular momentum, the spacecraft rotates in the opposite direction of the change in rotation of the wheels. It’s a cool physics trick. Anyway, the team checked them out, and everything looks good.
