The new year has started with a flurry of activity. The CRaTER instrument was delivered to Goddard Space Flight Center on January 6th. Next week, we will uncrate the instrument and run it through its post-ship functional testing. The flight harness completed bake-out today. The propulsion module completed its environmental testing today. The spacecraft bus and the avionics panel are in the LRO clean room, and the mechanical team has started installation of electronics on the panel.

LRO team members prepare the Avionics Module flight wiring harness for bake-out. The harness was placed in a vacuum chamber and heated in order to drive off remaining volatiles before installation on the spacecraft. The bake-out ensures that the harness will not contaminate the instruments when the entire spacecraft operates in vacuum. The vacuum chamber is shown in the background. Pictured from left to right are: Trick, Larry Gibb, Doug Duvall, Phil Luers, Curtis Dunsmore

Charles Baker, the LRO thermal lead, inspects the flight radiator panel. This panel will be mounted to the zenith face of the spacecraft. Heat is conducted from the avionics to this panel, and this panel dumps the heat to space. The radiator panel is covered in Optical Surface Reflectors (OSR) that enable the panel to continue to run cold even in direct sunlight.