• Mood: jubilant
• Music: grimes - venus fly ft janelle monae

Day 33/365: Successful launch!

One of our hardware CoIs (co-investigators) on the JUICE mission is a group in Graz, Austria who have been working long and hard on a new type of laser-based magnetometer sensor. The flight model was delivered more than a year ago now to be mounted on the Chinese satellite Zhangheng-1 (ZH-1) – also known as the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES).

Today, they got to celebrate a successful launch on a Long March 2D rocket from Inner Mongolia. Apparently it was -15 degrees C at the launch site.

They are naturally very excited about this, but also still nervous, because the boom with their sensor on it won't be deployed until Monday. Nevertheless! Successful launch! Given that it is a single-point-failure that can never be mitigated away, this is always cause for celebration.

You can read more about CSES, and the six CubeSat-based satellites that launched with it, here.

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