These last two weeks have flown by! Despite what was originally planned, my schedule transitioned such that I have been working four days a week at the US Forest Service and twice a week at Adler Planetarium on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The break in between my commute to Milwaukee has been more than welcome. It's also helped me maintain a little bit more flexibility in my days by reducing my commute time (plus the lake shore bike ride is significantly more pleasant). Since the last NITELITE flight by Adler resulted in the loss of all their equipment into Lake Michigan, we have been tasked with rebuilding the whole system and testing it before the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, DOE representatives, and the National Park Service associates arrive in Chicago (~August 30th).
The urgency has been welcomed, and so far the entire payload has been rebuilt as has majority of the equipment inside. Additionally, before the actual test flight set to be around next Saturday, I have been tasked with analyzing the data from past NITELITE flights in order to deduce potential improvements to the system and equipment while we're still rebuilding. It has proven to be quite difficult, but Ken sat down with me for pretty much the whole day two Saturdays ago to work on the analysis using anecdotal evidence and unique methods of data analysis I had never been exposed to before. The Saturday after was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission (the one where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the moon). It was a big event to say the least and I got to see (& meet) a number of VIPs including Beth Moses, Jim Lovell (!!), and Reatha Clark King.