From: <Jim.Lovell_at_email.protected>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:43:20 +1000

Hi everyone,

This is a heads-up on the LBA schedule. There are big changes afoot
due to last-minute Tid schedule changes! Please accept my apologies
in advance if you were already salivating at the prospect of LBA
data. It looks like one or two experiments will need to be ditched,
others moved. I'll hopefully have a new schedule out early next week
but I need to let the dust settle a bit at JPL first. For those of
you who are interested in what happened, read on.

Due to several slips in the launch of Stereo (currently scheduled for
Oct 25), the LBA week turned into hot property at JPL. Stereo's post-
launch manoeuvres require two 34m antennas as there are two
spacecraft. This, combined with the Madrid 70m being down until the
end of the year means that every mission has been scrounging Tid 70m
time. Carleen Ward, a scheduler at JPL who looks after radio
astronomy, has done a heroic job at trying to defend our time. The
Mars missions have cut back their requirements to the bare minimum
and even cancelled tracks because they couldn't get at some of our
radio astronomy time.

The good news is that this was an exceptional week and we probably
won't get hit so hard next time.

Cheers,
Jim

--
Dr Jim Lovell,                                      Jim.Lovell_at_csiro.<!--nospam-->au
CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility       Ph:    (02) 6125 6715
c/o RSAA, Mt Stromlo Observatory,                 Fax:   (02) 6125 0260
Cotter Road, Weston ACT 2611
Australia                    http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Jim.Lovell
At Tidbinbilla Ph (02) 6201 7842 (RA Lab), x7800 (switch), x7940(shift)

Received on 2006-10-20 10:43:53