Montana and Colorado "Open Lids" Successful

The critical "opening" operation was successfully accomplished for both the Montana State University (MSU) and University of Colorado (UC) experiments. The MSU dust collection device has a two panel lid that must the opened in order to expose its dust collection plate. At 10:05 MDT the command was sent to heat the MSU servo motors. This command applies current to a set of heaters for 5 minutes in order to raise the motors to operating temperature. At the end of the heat cycle the motor temperatures were above 20 degrees C and the command to open the lid was transmitted. The open operation performed smoothly and the MSU experiment is now collecting data. The image on the left (provided by CosmoCam) shows the MSU experiment (far right) in the open state.

The University of Colorado imaging experiment includes a shield to prevent sunlight from directly entering their main telescope tube. This shield needs to be in place whenever the sun is above the horizon and below 30 degrees elevation. After 10:00 am the sun have risen high enough to not be a problem. Thus, at 10:24 MDT we issued the UC "OPEN" command and observed the success lifting of the solar shield. The image on the right shows the Colorado experiment with the shield in the open position. As the sun begins to set, we will need to close the shield later in the afternoon about 16:00 MDT and then reopen after sunset.