Sorry we haven’t been posting much lately!

To tell the truth, some of us are experiencing a little bit of a lull. We’re in conjunction right now — this means that the Sun is directly between Earth and Mars, so we can’t communicate with the spacecraft. (Here’s a link with a few diagrams to illustrate this.)

The HiRISE instrument is turned off, and we’re not taking any images. However, there are other activities going on at HiROC….

We start imaging again on November 8, and a few of us are already planning for that. PSP, the Primary Science Phase, is divided into two-week cycles. The first cycle is rm001, the second rm002, etc. Each cycle has a Targeting Specialist assigned to it (this one isn’t me, or I wouldn’t have time to write this!). The Targeting Specialist works with a member of the science team, the “Co-Investigator of the Pay Period,” (”pay period” because of the two-week cycle) or CIPP. The CIPP helps to choose scientifically important targets, and the Targeting Specialist does the scheduling and commanding. They work together on coordinating with other teams, choosing camera parameters, etc. There are a lot of details that need to be worked out!

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