Hi everyone—my name is Hugh Hatcher, and this week at LASP in Boulder, Colorado, I continued working with Dmitry Vorobiev and the rest of our fiber-optics team.
Over the week, CJ and I handled the same core tasks in the UV-fiber transmission experiment. We prepped the fibers by cleaving them with the ruby knife aiming for smooth, square end-faces and set up the vacuum chamber, pumping it down to about 3 × 10⁻⁶ torr. With the chamber ready, we aligned one end of the fiber to the deuterium lamp and the other to the monochromator slit, then ran a fresh series of spectral scans.
This week we experienced some issues with lower than expected fiber transmission and CJ and I jumped into some troubleshooting. After checking the alignment on both ends of the fiber, we found out that a fracture in the fiber was to blame. CJ and I then pumped the chamber back up to normal pressure and cut the fractured part of the fiber off and continued the experiment.
Also, this week CJ and I had the super exciting opportunity of going into the cleanroom to watch the final assembly of LASP’s cube satellite SPRITE. We followed the strict gowning procedures (covering our hair, donning gloves, boots, and putting on full-body suits) to maintain the clean environment. We watched the delicate assembly of SPRITE and got to see all of the components (telescope, flight computer, and chassis) come together.
Next week, we’ll pick up cut-back measurements again—shortening the fiber in measured steps to chart attenuation versus length—and begin varying fiber types to chart performance.
Outside the lab, CJ and I were able to go out this weekend and camp and ride dirt bikes 30 minutes outside of Boulder which was super fun!
These are pictures of mirrors used in the telescopes of CubeSat missions and a refraction grading from the Cleanroom.
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