Li Ling – Jan 28:
RAN recovery at ~23:00 tonight! Since I’ve been taking night shifts when RAN is out at sea, I’ve actually missed the last two recoveries and this was the real recovery that I participated in 🙂
After three real missions, it appeared that everyone was already quite comfortable with the recovery procedure, and Anna even started a bet (with the price of honors and praises) on how late RAN was going to be compared to the computed surfacing time according to the mission plan 😛
Anders operating the LARS (Launch And Recovery System) to winch RAN back
into the container
Mark signaling Anders that RAN is still not completely inside the
container
The entire recovery operation (from the moment RAN surfaced) took only 30min! As for the bet, she turned out to be only 16min late from the calculated surface time, and I was optimistic enough to win the bet 🙂
I stayed up late at night to download the new mission data, and got to witness a happy Lisa (from ARTEMIS) getting her first successful mono-core cast! The tube she is holding contains the water-sediment boundary on the seafloor!
People from left to right: Rachel, Philip, Rob Sherell and a really happy Lisa