43 Days to Launch
We are just completing the procedure for commissioning the instrument in flight. The first sequences will be run on 7 April in the current planning. Around 12 April, we will have the first pointing campaign with images of ...
... specified targets. We are currently planning a star (theta Crt) as our first target. A starfield (Area 104 of the Landolt catalogue) will be our second target for geometric calibration.
The exposure times have been calculated for both targets but with a little margin. All of our checks with integrating sphere data and with knowledge of the system gain suggest that our exposure times should be good to 10% or so.
The pointing requirements have been delivered to ESOC and the first versions of the command files will be sent to ESOC this evening.