Category: Reviews

While most of the team was on vacation or otherwise out of the country, Jasper, Milan, and Constantin visited ZARM in Bremen to have our Experiment Acceptance Review (EAR), which we passed!

The main part of this review was not the presentation but a thermal vacuum test of the whole instrument, simulating the expected conditions we will face during the balloon flight in October.

We struggled with temperature management of the experiment: The experiment lost too much temperature too fast. To counteract this, we removed some emmissive tape and added a small “hat” to keep some temperature in the sensor-head, the part where the BGO crystals and photodiodes are located.

We were allowed another hour in the chamber after modifying SETH to verify that our improvements worked. After a presentation on the following day, the experiment was packed and turned over to ZARM to ship to Kiruna. We will fly to ESRANGE on the 3rd of October. Until then, we are working on an analysis of the test measurements we took.

Today we had two special visitors from ZARM (Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity) in Bremen – Dr. Merle Cornelius and Florian Leu – since it was time for our IPR (Integrational Progress Review).

Once they arrived, we quickly introduced ourselves and then headed straight to the lab. Since the ground station is finally set-up to communicate with SETH and receive data, we jumped right into a measurement with SETH – thus we demonstrated that SETH does measurements autonomously and automatic.

After that, it was time for our presentation. We talked about time management, gave a quick recap on mechanics and electronics, shared some updates on the software, and walked through our verification tests. And also: it was the debut of our outreach team (YAY!).

Next, we got some helpful feedback on our SED and discussed a few changes. Then we went back to the lab to take a closer look at the experiment (and took the photo above!). Since we had our guests with us, we also showed off our 3D printer – doing its printing – which was cool because several of our components are 3D-printed.

To wrap things up, we disassembled SETH as planned anyway. We’ve had a bit of noise in the data, so it needs fixing – nothing too dramatic, but still important.

After a full day at the University in Kiel, we said goodbye to our guests and are now looking ahead to the EAR in Bremen this September.
(But first… we have to make it through exam period. Wish us luck!)