A busy day (Monday) for me...my on-console shift ended at 6 AM. Then I got a few hours sleep before tickets for Paul McCartney's Aug 1 FedEx Field show went on internet "presale" for American Express card holders. Success! I was able to get tickets on the field, albeit rather far back from the stage. Then back in to work at noon for an hour. The Lunar Orbit Insertion burn parameters were ready for conversion into onboard computer-readable form. I created the "table" load files and made sure they arrived safely at the FlatSat simulator for checkout. After I returned home to get some more sleep, the checkout completed successfully and they were uploaded to the Orbiter. About an hour ago we performed a brief "engineering burn" to confirm that the spacecraft operates as expected before we do the 40-minute burn beginning at 5:47 AM EDT on Tuesday. So far all seems to have gone extremely well in the test burn.
This evening I decided to play in my Goddard softball league team's regularly scheduled game. (Things have been going well with LRO and I have some excess adrenaline to burn off.) Unfortunately we came up on the short end of a 14-10 score. We fell behind 10-0 but then came back strong with 7 runs in one inning. I led it off with a hit, scored, and got a second hit in that inning, but a three-run deficit was as close as we got the rest of the way.
At least I got to enjoy a beautiful evening after the clouds blew through and the Sun came out. I knew the Moon was there too, but too close to the Sun to be visible. (New Moon was on Monday afternoon.) The Moon passed a bit north of the Sun, which is why we didn't have an eclipse today.
Within a day or two, a crescent Moon will emerge in the evening sky, visible in the west after sunset. Hopefully it will by then have a "moon' of its own...LRO.
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