Getting settled in

Monday May 22, 2006

It's difficult getting used to the never-ending daylight here. This morning at 3am I woke up when a ray of sunlight came through the shades!
Here's a photo of the back wing of "Hotel Dilbert" where I'm staying in Esrange. My room is toward the left end on the second floor. (Go here for room photos.)

The main Esrange building is across from the hotel, further away in this photo. The cafeteria and meeting rooms are in the main building. Most of the activity here during the year is for research rocket flights, but I got here too late to see the last one of the season. There are two rocket launch towers a couple miles from the balloon launch area. The long-duration scientific balloon launches begin during the 'summer' when there is continuous daylight for the solar power systems and the winds at 100K+ feet head west towards Canada. Payloads (telescopes and space physics experiments) are recovered in Northern Canada after several days.