Monthly 7_25 Page 1

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Monthly Status Report Report due 7/25/00 Schedule
statused as of July 7, 2000
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Project Status Summary

• Technical
• May Jun Jul

Programmatic May Jun Jul
Resources May Jun Jul
Schedule May Jun Jul
Detailed Description (for items identified as
yellow or red)

• Over the last period we continued with flight
  fabrication and prototype testing. We continue
  to see no major show stoppers. Some of our
  biggest concerns continue to to be with outside
  purchases/subcontracts. We have already
  implemented some workarounds to maintain the
  schedule (with contingency). The current
  schedule does reflect all of the most recent
  delivery dates from outside vendors (as of
  7/24/00) and an update to the schedule to regain
  schedule slack.
• Latest project photos are available on Aspera-3
  web site.

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Problem and Concern Summary
PProblem CConcern RResolved
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Accomplishments of the Last Month -ELS

• Ran High Voltage breakdown test. Test was very
  straightforward with no problems.
• Connected ELS end-to-end through GSE and tried to
  see electron beam. Successfully saw beam in all
  16 sectors. One sector seemed very noisy, one
  sector seemed very weak.
• Examined pulse height distribution curves for
  flight MCP set. Threshold of ELS was set way to
  low. Pulled ELS out of the chamber and changed
  resistors to raise the threshold. Also cleaned
  up the wiring for the grounding of the ELS
  electronics.
• Realized that with the higher than expected
  required voltage for the MCP bias, we only have
  about 150 volts headroom on the power supply
  for operations(current max voltage is 2800 v).
  We decided for flight build to increase max
  voltage to 3000 v. Flight and flight spare HVPS
  are now being fabricated for max voltage of 3000
  v.
• Received 2nd of 5 flight MCP sets. Next
  possible set is at least a week away.

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Accomplishments of the Last Month ELS (cont.)

• Continued characterization testing. Spent lots
  of time chasing noise in the GSE and set up.
  This included reducing length of cables, adding
  shields, adjusting GSE s/w, characterizing the
  pulse shape at various locations in the test
  set-up, etc. When ELS is in the chamber without
  the housing, the background rate is approaching
  that of just the MCP after burn-in (cant do any
  better than that).
• New Concern When the Housing and Grid are
  installed, the background count rate goes up
  considerably. We are currently trouble shooting.
• Talked to Hyperfine They increased their
  estimated late delivery because their
  subcontractor who does rough machining is late.
  As of 7/14/00, it looked like Hyperfine would be
  8 weeks late on delivery of ELS mechanical parts.
  We have now pulled back rough machining and and
  are currently cutting metal on the flight and
  flight spare housing. High tolerance finish
  machining will still be done by Hyperfine. We
  have updated the schedule to reflect our current
  estimate for machining at SwRI, Hyperfine
  machining, and update on UV coating time needed.

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Accomplishments of the Last Month - IMA

• Completed fabrication of the Pogo alignment jig.
• Disassembled IMA to examine problem of cracked
  MCP. It was determined that the failure was
  caused by a bending mode rather than crushing or
  a sharp bur. Have come up with a couple of
  possible reasons for failure. We are looking at
  modification of the design to correct the
  problem.
• The threshold of IMA also needs to be tailored to
  the MCP. It is likely that we are currently set
  to sensitive
• Started fabrication of FM and FS IMA anode
  boards. Stopped to work on ELS HVPS boards.
• Began fabrication of test MCP that strain
  gauges will be mounted to for MCP holder
  evaluation.
• We are focusing on ELS rather than IMA as it is
  critical path.

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Accomplishments of the Last Month - Data
Reduction Software

• Updated ASPERA-3.org Web Site Documentation
• Continued Updates to the ASPERA-3 Data System
  Interface Document
• Continued Formally Documenting APAF Software
  Requirements
• Continued Providing Technical Assistance for EPO
  Web Information
• Continued Defining and Implementing IDFS Web
  Tools
• Provided Software Support for ELS
  Characterization
• Held monthly ASPERA-3 Software Status Meeting
  (July 24, 2000)
• Article Published in July 2000 Issue of NASA Tech
  Briefs, "A Standard for Scientific Data Files",
  that Briefly Describes the IDFS Paradigm

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Planned Activities for the Next Month - ELS

• (Hopefully) receive flight sets 3 and 4 of the
  MCPs
• Finish rough machining of ELS parts and receive
  high tolerance parts back from Hyperfine.
• Finish characterization testing of the ELS
  prototype.
• Begin environmental testing of the ELS prototype.
• Finish fabrication of the flight and flight spare
  HVPS and Amp boards.
• Finalize test procedures.

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Planned Activities for the Next Month - IMA

• Finalize investigation of the MCP holder and make
  necessary modifications to prototype and flight /
  flight spare units.
• Finish fabrication of the Amp board and Digital
  Board.
• Fix pogo alignment in prototype.
• Change out FPGA on prototype.
• Finalize test procedures.
• Restart vacuum testing prototype, following ELS
  prototype testing to verify FPGA change.

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Planned Activities for the Next Month - Data
Reduction Software Tasks

• Deliver APAF Data System Interface Document (Due
  Aug. 18)
• Continue Formally Documenting APAF Software
  Requirements
• Continue Providing Technical Assistance for EPO
  Web Information
• Continue Defining and Implementing IDFS Web Tools
• Continue Providing Software Support for ELS
  Characterization as Needed
• Provide Software Support for Upcoming ASPERA-3
  Team Meeting as Required

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Problem and Concern Status

• Delivery of MCPs from Burle
• This is still a major concern. We have received
  2 sets of mechanical samples, 1 set of flight
  reject plates, and 2 sets of plates that meet
  flight specs. The next potential delivery of
  flight plates will be in two weeks. Our schedule
  is still not effected by the delivery slippage.
  We have been in close contact with the Burle test
  engineer and he has been very forthcoming about
  status and providing us information.

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Problem and Concern Status (cont.)

• Alignment of ELS
• We found out that Hyperfine was projecting a
  delivery that was 8 weeks late largely due to
  their supplier being late. We have pulled the
  rough machining back in house and have
  prioritized the order of machining. Our goal is
  to have all parts needing UV coating (ie housings
  and inner deflection plates) completed by
  Hyperfine by mid-August.

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Problem and Concern Status (cont.)

• Alignment of Pogos in IMA
• We have completed modification of the fixture
  that holds the pogos in place during their
  assembly and soldering process. We have also
  modified the assembly and test procedures to
  include resistance-to-ground measurements that
  will verify the electrical connection after
  assembly, and prior to and after each
  environmental test. We will keep this issue a
  concern until the prototype is corrected and the
  assembly procedure is verified. We feel that
  this is only a small concern because after our
  problem, we consulted with some non-ASPERA
  personnel who have more experience using pogos.
  We have since incorporated their proven expertise
  into our assembly process.

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Problem and Concern Status (cont.)

• MCP mount IMA
• We are still in the process of determining the
  cause of the cracks in the IMA MCP. We have
  fabricated a test MCP out of thin aluminum that
  will be instrumented with strain gauges. We will
  reassemble the prototype with the psuedo MCP and
  measure the stress /strain during assembly. We
  will then make mods to the prototype mechanical
  pieces and verify stress / strain is reduced. We
  may also use this technique to verify flight
  parts.

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Problem and Concern Status (cont.)

• High background rate in ELS
• After a lot of effort debugging GSE, shortening
  cables, modifying ELS GSE software, we have
  gotten the background noise of the ELS sensor
  (without the housing and grid) to a background
  level comparable with the count rate for the MCP
  by itself. Early testing, however in the housing
  with the grid, showed very high count rates. We
  are in the process of investigating this problem.
  The first step is to see if the problem still
  exists since we have debugged the GSE, test
  set-up etc.

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Schedule Summary

• ELS The July 7th version of the schedule
  continues to show that the flight HVPS is the
  critical path for ELS (0 days of float). We
  simply started the fabrication of the HVPS later
  than we should have.
• The mechanical path is the second most critical
  caused by Hyperfine being late. ( 5 days of
  float)
• We adjusted the schedule over the last month
  incorporating many workarounds (ie. more
  realistic durations for some tasks, weekend, and
  shift work etc.)
• Note the schedule still has 21 days slack at the
  end (DEL0050) in addition to float shown for each
  task.
• MCP delivery is still not effecting the schedule.

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Schedule Summary (cont.)

• IMA The IMA schedule still shows 5 days float,
  this is of course dependent on the MCP mount
  investigation. We feel that worst case however,
  we will only need to modify or remanufacture a
  small number of mechanical parts. This will
  occur in parallel with the stuffing and bench
  check out of the amp and digital PC boards thus
  not effecting the schedule.
• Software activities continue to be on schedule.
• The full-up schedule is available on the ASPERA-3
  Web site.

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ASPERA-3 PHASE B/C/D MASTER SCHEDULE