A quick update

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UPDATE:
Launch of Payload 1J at 1722 UT (9:22am PST) on 1/1/13!!!!

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Happy New Year all!

As it is about 1 hour prior to our daily telecon I have some good news! This may change by the minute so keep an eye out here for updates.

Status (last update UT 1400 31Dec2012)

• Halley team has payload 1D flight ready - 1B is ready for outside testing and payload 1I is being tested.  

• SANAE team has payload 1J ready for launch!, payload 1K is beginning indoor assembly 

• Launch attempt IN PROGRESS!!!!!!

   John and Brett just headed out to the flight line at SANAE with payload 1J. Estimated launch time is 1500 UT on 01Jan2013.

Halley will be acting as ground station until we can pass it over to UCSC. I will be posting updates here

Payload is out on the flight line
Squibs are connected.
They are getting ready to start inflation!

Current Space Weather conditions from Spaceweather.com

Solar wind speed: 352 km/s
Solar wind density 1.4 protons/cm^3
no significant x-ray flares in the last 24+ hours
Although there are 87 sunspots and a few bigger ones moving towards the western limb
Current kp = 0 with a 24 hr max of kp = 1
Bz = 0.5 nT north
Btotal = 2.3 nT
There are no observable coronal holes and a very low chance of a flare/CME.

Another very quiet day. This could be good and give us a nice baseline for comparison if we ever get some storms.

Late last night (early morning for them) we also got an update from John.


SANAE weather now looks marginal for today and great for the following
two afternoons. We've found the winds can be a little better at our
launch site than the prediction claims so we might still go today, but
just thought I'd give our latest info.

SANAE weather can be found directly at e.g:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/rt/amps/wrf_plots/2013010100/15km/meteogram/san4.png
where you modify the date appropriately YYYYMMDDHH where the hour
options are 00 and 12. Keep in mind that the 'midnight' forecast is
working its way out to 3 days just now at ~8am, must take a while for
the model to run, but they update the picture as the model works it
out so you can get the first day's worth of predicts at ~3AM UT.

or you can play around with a selector (which probably has weather
plots for Halley as well)
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/rt/amps/

-John