First Days at Esrange

The team arrived at Esrange (just outside Kiruna, Sweden) to prepare to launch XL-Calibur on Friday May 6th, and our first few days have been very productive! On Friday we fully assembled the truss, installed the polarimeter, and completed initial testing of our flight systems and the detector itself. We are very pleased to announce that all of our electronics survived their journey from South Texas to the Arctic Circle! Saturday, our Japanese colleagues successfully installed the mirror and then completed initial alignment measurements on Sunday. Our Swedish teammates also performed initial threshold optimizations of the shield (which filters out high energy particles that can interact with the detector and disrupt the signal from the source we’re observing). This is really an incredible amount of progress for only a few days of work, and a testament to the cohesion of our team and the supportive and cooperative atmosphere that we’ve created through years of co-development and collaboration.