BARREL Status Report #14

BARREL Status Report #14
January 12, 2013

Good morning all. I apologize for not sending out a report for the
last couple of days. Our internet has slowed to a crawl. Something is
wrong with the satellite link, but they are working on fixing it. I
think it seems a little faster this morning, but maybe I'm just
getting used to it!

As mentioned before, we are having bad terrestrial weather at both
SANAE IV and Halley. Winds were up to 40 knots at SANAE IV yesterday with
whiteout conditions. Our winds at Halley are just shy of 30 knots
right now. The forecast shows the winds dying down on Monday
afternoon, so we are still hoping for a launch opportunity from Halley
then.

We currently have 6 payloads in the air (1D, 1I, 1J, 1K, 1N, 1O).
Payload 1M was terminated this morning at 1030 UT with last position
70.4S, 93.98W. Payload 1J has been in the air for 11 days! It is
likely to be terminated in the next day.  Alexa has been posting some
nice plots on the blog. I can't upload much from here right now, but
you can see maps of the payload locations and some plots of our first
x-ray events at relativisticballoons.blogspot.com. Nothing too
exciting just yet, but it has given us something to look at and is a
great opportunity to see how our coordination with the Van Allen
Probes teams is working. Many thanks to all the Van Allen Probes team,
especially John Wygant, for all the time and effort they've put into
coordinating with the BARREL team!!

All for now.
Robyn