Now we’re just sitting and waiting for the images to arrive. We’re all SO excited and impatient to see our new images, and this feels like sitting around in April waiting for Christmas morning…

Several pictures at HiROC of people waiting for the first science orbit image to come back for HiRISE.

I just flew in from LA this morning. We’ve been waiting for more than 4 years for these images. This should be great.

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.