SSC

The Swedish Space Corporation. A treasure trove of valuable ideas and insight into the inner workings of the space industry. As a group, our space mission class went there yesterday for an expert meeting. We describe what we are doing, they describe what they are doing, and then we collaborate to get a better understanding of our project and how it is moving along. Apparently, the world is shifting to nanosats and we as a group happen to be on the forefront of this trend. We have almost completed the design of our three craft (preliminary design, of course) and can soon begin the age old process of compromising...or locking ourselves in a room and arguing about who is right. :) No it is not as bad as it sounds, but being creative requires a certain amount of confidence in your ideas as well as the ability to compromise your own desires with that of the group.

On the observational side, we completed our observations with the NOT telescope and are now in the process of data reduction, or analyzing the data in a set order to get the most significant results from our work. This will most be fringe patterns that give information about our targets. Also, we have recently been acquainted with ASPRO, or a software that models information from the VLT. Yes, the VLT...that VLT. It is a wonderful program that helps with learning all about the practice of interferometry in the real world. We learned a good bit about the telescope design and its abilities and how to use different configurations depending on the object you wish to observe. There is much more in this than I first imagined, but it all has reasoning that will blow your mind. Guess you will have to be here to see for yourself.

Anyway, work is calling and I have to answer so talk to you later.