Instruments Division News
1/15/2009
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Welcome to our newest staff members: James Muzerolle, who joined the WIT team
in December, and Sami-Matias Niemi who joined the RIA Branch last week.
Congratulations to Andy Fruchter on his 15 years of service to STScI. Andy has been
an indispensable staff member, from his role in the first Hubble Deep Field
campaigns, to the invention of “drizzling” with Richard Hook, his scientific work on
GRBs and their host galaxies with Hubble, and now to his revamping of the
framework for MultiDrizzle. Thank you Andy, and we look forward to another 15
years of hard work!
HST news:
o Another attempt to restart the NICMOS Cryocooler System (NCS) has
started this morning.
o SM4 is still on track for May, 2009. Environmental testing of the backup
SI C&DH module is proceeding on schedule at GSFC.
o The supplemental call for proposals generated a lot of interest, with an
oversubscription of 12:1 in orbits. Notifications were sent out yesterday.
Phase II proposals will be due Jan. 27, and the first observations could be
scheduled after Feb. 5.
JWST news:
o 2009 is the “year of building” for JWST. All instrument CDRs are done,
teams are preparing and testing engineering models.
o The NIRSpec instrument team passed their Critical Design Review in
December. Tracy Beck will give us more details later at this TIPS.
o The NIRSpec Micro Shutter Array (MSA) system is having its CDR this
week at GSFC.
o ISIM is preparing for its Critical Design Review in March 2009, with a
dry run scheduled for Jan. 25.
o Next Thursday, Jan. 22, from 8:30-4:30, there will be a dry run of the
Design Review for the JWST Planning and Proposal System. This is an
opportunity to contribute HST expertise to the development of this JWST
system, and I encourage HST team members with relevant expertise and
interest to attend. You may charge the JWST ISIM WBS for this--P0004.03.03.01.
o On Friday, Feb. 6, developers from Teledyne will be here at STScI to
make presentations as part of training on IR detectors and ASICs for
JWST. While specifically JWST oriented, the general sessions on IR
detectors and ASICs are also relevant to HST. (These same ASICs will be
used for ACS-R.) Please charge your usual instrument WBS for
attendance at any of these sessions. Since much of the information is
ITAR restricted, you must register beforehand. Please reply to Dixie
Shipley.
o Goddard is advertising a civil service position to serve as ISIM I&T and
Commissioning Scientist for JWST. See the AAS job register.
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The STIC will meet here on Feb. 5 & 6.
Plans for office moves after the 4th floor construction is finished are being prepared.
I’ve distributed office assignments for INS; moves will start in early February,
beginning with offices on the rear hallway of the 4th floor, followed by the new
offices on the front side of the 4th floor. All the moves will take several weeks. The
basic logic behind these initial moves is:
o Move the archive group from Bloomberg back to Muller.
o To make room for the archive group, we’ve encouraged several research
staff to move to Bloomberg by assembling a research group in exoplanet
studies on the 6th floor.
o Move the OPO staff on the basement level to higher ground.
o Minimize the number of moves. (Even so, there are 107 and counting.)
The next INS lunch is Thursday, Jan. 29, in the Auditorium from 12:00-1:30.