8 December, 2000

Fixing stuff

Periodically, things break. And when they do, they need to get fixed with what is on hand. This makes for some creative solutions at times. Earlier this week, there appeared to be a short in one of the components of AST/RO that controls where the telescope is pointing, and we needed to fix it so that the telescope could return to its happy state of data collection. Unfortunately, Chris couldn't locate where specifically the problem was coming from so we had to replace the malfunctioning component. Easy, right? Take out the little bit thatıs messed up, put in a new one.

Nope.

Supplies tend to be limited at the south pole, and you need to work with what is available or what you can make from parts that are lying around. Fortunately we had a spare for the malfunctioning part, but it wasnıt an exact spare. Actually, it was a completely different spare. A simple fix turned into two days of taking out components and replacing them with completely new ones which necessitated a different power supply and a different wiring scheme.