I certainly breathed a sigh of relief when we got confirmation from the telemetry that our first image was successfully acquired. Now we’re waiting in suspense to actually receive the image here at HiROC (HiRISE Operations Center). We have some computers set up in the center room so that we can all crowd around and see the image this afternoon.

I share an office with some of our downlink operations people, and right now I’m listening to them discuss their plans for the image processing that will take place this afternoon. They can tell you more about the details of the processing, but essentially right now they are making sure that all the plans and procedures are in place so that things go smoothly this afternoon. The last couple of days have been filled with testing, testing, and more testing.

We in downlink operations are running our final tests to make sure everything is in working order to receive our new data! Everything’s working great, downlink is GO for imaging!!

What is downlink? Well the uplink people do all the planning and write the commands for the camera to take the pictures. Once the camera has taken the pictures, the downlink people pull the data off the spacecraft and process it.