So you may have heard that we have had lots of things to fix on this run. From the very beginning there was an issue with one of the motor shafts in Clio: you might remember that Clio wasn’t ready on our first night. Everybody but Jordan Stone would have been fine without that motor shaft being connected.
Then there was the motor electronics failure — turns out it was the same wheel in Clio. We could have done 99% of the science on this run without it.
Next it was the X stage. You’ll of course remember that we replaced a motor at the beginning of the run. That was specifically because of Jordan Stone’s science. Lately, we’d been having trouble with that same motor. I stayed up late to replace the controller, which didn’t fix it. Eventually, with help from Emilio, we traced it to a loose wire on a connector (we think, verdict isn’t final). Again — everybody else would have been happy with the old X motor, and everybody else could have just worked with the faulty wire.
You would think that after all of this bad news, all of the ways in which the system keeps almost breaking in a way that affects only Jordan, that he would just give up. But he came anyway, and with the exception of some clouds it looks like he’s getting lucky with MagAO.
Laird wandered into the control room today. I guess that means we get to go home soon.
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