Tom,

A picture is worth a thousand words.....

Enclosed is a picture taken very late at night here on the 1st. You can see the LENA ion optics together for the first time. If you look closely, you will see white standoffs in the extraction lens stack on the left hand side. These are the ceramic standoffs. The darker colored standoffs are the cylindrical resistors which are placed at different positions in the inner and outer stack (as opposed to putting them all in one column) because they are slightly longer than their ceramic counterparts.

You can also see the ESA plates below and if you look in the gap, you will see the gold blacked insides. The plate on the right hand side is a cover where the TOF will go. It is there to protect the gold black.

There is some shimming to be done but otherwise the unit went together VERY well. The best was to watch the extraction lens stack come together. It only took about an hour once the parts were lined up. Eric, Ken Strickler, and Joe Mobilia worked very hard and very long hours. We encountered some problems as we went along but in all cases we were able to resolve them in a matter of hours as opposed to days and we were able to keep moving ahead.

If Eric does not make tomorrow's flight, he will certainly be there by Wed. I have so much faith in him now that I'm off to Switzerland for a ROSINA meeting in the morning.

Stephen

Stephen A. Fuselier
fuselier@spasci.com
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center
Space Physics Laboratory
3251 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1191
Voice: (650) 424-3334
Fax: (650) 424-3333