Our cycle of twittering (”HiTwycle“) is now over – the last image is on the ground, validated, processed, and will soon be released. (We release data in 100-orbit increments, which don’t necessarily fall along cycle boundaries, so the first half of cycle 89 will be released in May and the second half in June.)

It was fun to share some of the behind-the-scenes details with our followers! I thought it was pretty funny when Nick or I were too lazy to walk over to each others’ offices to ask a question, and asked each other over twitter instead. ha! I guess those questions probably give you a feel for the nitty-gritty of planning a cycle, anyway. I hope it was interesting! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.

If you missed it and want to read through the saga, I made an archive of tweets with the #hitwycle hashtag. (I didn’t start this until part-way through, though, so unfortunately the first few days of tweets are missing. Soon you can check the Library of Congress for them! ) You can see the whole archive here:

http://www.twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/hitwycle

Some of my favorites are below.
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Follow along! We’re in the midst of twittering an entire planning cycle, start to finish. Right now we’re in what’s called “IO week 1″, the second week of a 5-week planning process. You can follow the hashtag #hitwycle to see all the updates in real time.

This blog entry describes it in much more detail, from when we tried to do this last fall. Unfortunately, that time the spacecraft went into safe mode, and we had to stop the experiment. Here’s hoping for better luck this time! :\

Cast of characters:

One difference is that this time the CIPP (@nick_space) is here in Tucson. So it’s pretty easy to walk over to his office and ask him a question. Despite that, we’ve actually had a few discussions over twitter instead. Talk about lazy!! The good side of that is that you get to follow the day-to-day planning and see what it’s really like to plan two weeks of HiRISE images!

Links:

Originally posted at Spaced Out (Again):

We are going to try to Twitter a planning cycle for the HiRISE (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu) experiment. The idea is to give people a feeling of all the work we have to do to get images from Mars out of a very special piece of equipment. Here are a couple of things you need to know to follow what is going on.

The scientist in charge of the scientific support for the cycle is called the CIPP. For cycle 75, that is @nick_space. Nick will be assisted by his Post-Doc., Anya, who is @mozhetbyt

The targeting specialist ensures that the plan produced can be implemented and keeps the CIPP from doing anything stupid. The targeting specialist is called the HiTS and for cycle 75 that is @laughingrid.

The HiRISE project has its own Twitter account (@HiRISE) which can also be followed.
We will try to use #hitwycle as a search hashtag for tweets.

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The first few cycles of the extended science phase (ESP) have been very similar to the previous primary science phase (PSP). The main difference has been that the Observation IDs start with ESP instead of PSP! (like ESP_011268_2485) We’re also adding some warm-up observations on the night side of the planet now, which is adding some extra work in the planning. Luckily (?), Mars is at its farthest distance from the Earth right now, so the data rate is very low. This means fewer images to plan, so we have some extra time to do special things like this.

The next cycle, however, will mark some changes in the way we do the planning process. This is cycle 58 (can you believe it’s been that many cycles since we started??). For most of that time, we’ve been doing things in much the same way. We’ve gotten so good at it that everyone decided they wanted to change everything & mess it all up. haha, just kidding. We’re actually trying to simplify things. Even though we’ve gotten pretty good at this, it’s still an incredibly complex process. We would like to continue doing it for a long time and still remain sane. Also, we expect that our funding will be cut in the future, and we want to make sure we can still do everything even if we have fewer people. Plus, things just wouldn’t feel right if we weren’t constantly changing something!

If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details, here are some of the things we’re changing: (more…)

It seems that things are (dare I say?) settling down into a routine here at HiROC. As the cycles progress, we get a little better with each one: software tools are being developed, our procedures are being refined, and we’re becoming more adept and making fewer mistakes (hopefully!). Of course, there are always little interruptions and semi-emergencies that preclude relaxing too much.
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Tomorrow marks the beginning of the third two-week cycle in the primary mission. However, it’s only my first cycle! One Targeting Specialist is assigned to each cycle, and I’m on for cycle 3. Because we spend almost four weeks planning before the cycle even starts, there are three Targeting Specialists overlapping at any one time, in various stages of the planning process. Plus there’s a backup — HiBUTS, which stands for HiRISE BackUp Targeting Specialist. (I can’t take credit for that — that’s one of HiKu’s!)

Since before PSP started, we’ve all been working long hours. We haven’t had much time to blog, but right now I’m just waiting nervously for my commands to be radiated, so I thought I’d share this recipe. For all you faithful blog readers out there (all 2 of you? ), here’s my secret to surviving long workdays and cold nights:

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Sorry we haven’t been posting much lately!

To tell the truth, some of us are experiencing a little bit of a lull. We’re in conjunction right now — this means that the Sun is directly between Earth and Mars, so we can’t communicate with the spacecraft. (Here’s a link with a few diagrams to illustrate this.)

The HiRISE instrument is turned off, and we’re not taking any images. However, there are other activities going on at HiROC….

We start imaging again on November 8, and a few of us are already planning for that. PSP, the Primary Science Phase, is divided into two-week cycles. The first cycle is rm001, the second rm002, etc. Each cycle has a Targeting Specialist assigned to it (this one isn’t me, or I wouldn’t have time to write this!). The Targeting Specialist works with a member of the science team, the “Co-Investigator of the Pay Period,” (”pay period” because of the two-week cycle) or CIPP. The CIPP helps to choose scientifically important targets, and the Targeting Specialist does the scheduling and commanding. They work together on coordinating with other teams, choosing camera parameters, etc. There are a lot of details that need to be worked out!

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