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Gravity Probe B

Testing Einstein's Universe

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK ENDING 12 September 1997:

STANFORD HIGHLIGHT
Dr. Gregory Gutt and his team have shown that the GTU-2 SQUID remains flux locked when the Gyroscope Suspension System (GSS) bridge is operated. (Note that the SQUID noise reduction to Science Mission levels is still in progress in GTU-2.) This preliminary result is the first stage in demonstrating the compatibility of the gyroscope readout system and the GSS. A SQUID signal at the bridge frequency was obtained, as expected, by increasing the bridge excitation to 400mV. A final stage of the system compatibility testing will take place with the SQUIDs functioning at Science Mission specifications.

SPACE VEHICLE HIGHLIGHT
The Experiment Control Unit (ECU) Test Set, consisting of the ECU engineering unit and three Sun Ultra workstations with flight and ground system software installed, was delivered to Stanford Tuesday September 2nd. Following installation and checkout the ECU was connected to temperature sensors in the flight dewar and temperature data was read from the sensors in the dewar by the ECU. This data was read from the ECU by the flight software and transmitted to the ground system software where it was extracted from the telemetry stream, displayed and archived. This is a major milestone as it is the first time data from Relativity Mission flight hardware has been read by flight software and transmitted to ground system software.

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