After 20 years of planning and waiting, IRS team is more than ready for launch

By Kate Becker

On the door of an office shared by Vassilis Charmandaris and Keven Uchida, between glossy posters advertising astronomical instruments and conferences, is a small sign: "Time is running out...AGAIN," it reads.

If the sign seems a somewhat unenthusiastic announcement of the long-anticipated launch of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), it is because Charmandaris and Uchida have learned to temper their enthusiasm. SIRTF's launch was postponed twice this spring, and as the launch date of Aug. 23 approached, it was delayed yet again, to Aug. 25. So they are acutely aware of the delaying impact of technical glitches and bad weather.

The two researchers are part of Cornell's infrared spectrograph (IRS) team, and are poised, albeit warily, to see the instrument lift off aboard SIRTF. Since the IRS team came together for the first time in 1983 -- for perspective, two years before this fall's incoming Cornell freshmen were born -- it has grown from a group of 11 to a Cornell-based international consortium of 23 scientists from Greece, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, the U.S. and The Netherlands.

Led by Cornell astronomer James Houck, the original 11 designed the IRS for a very different SIRTF from the one about to be launched. Originally dubbed the Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF was intended to commute from Earth to space every few months.

Since then, said Houck, SIRTF has "become much simpler" -- and much cheaper. First given a budget of $2 billion by NASA, the orbiting craft now has a pared-down price tag of a thrifty $600 million.

Houck notes that he and his colleagues have tried to maintain the scientific functionality of the IRS in the design completed in 1994, but the price markdown sacrificed the instrument's long-wavelength capabilities.

This might seem like ancient history to the current crop of IRS researchers. Charmandaris -- known around Cornell's Space Sciences Building as "Dr. Charm" -- was just 16 and living his native Greece when NASA first gave the IRS a seat aboard SIRTF. Now an IRS research associate specializing in extragalactic astronomy and the construction of a catalog of infrared calibrator sources, Charmandaris has spent four years at Cornell.

But as the launch delays piled up, life had to go on for members of the IRS team. Charmandaris, for one, had to complete his required service in the Greek military and has been balancing his life as a scientist in Ithaca with his duties as a soldier. Once he puts in four months of military service this summer, he has six months of service remaining.

"He's missed," said Houck, especially because Charmandaris has "a skill of writing papers quickly," no minor gift for a team expecting their instrument to return big, rapid-fire results once it records its first light.

Bernhard Brandl, a German astrophysicist who has been with the IRS team since 1996, also had to leave his post at Cornell this year, but for a very different reason: he was offered a tenured faculty position at the University of Leiden and is the technical lead scientist for an infrared instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (formerly the Next Generation Space Telescope). The telescope, which NASA hopes will launch in 2010, will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope.

Brandl "kept the local shop going from one day to the next," said Houck, "but he had a tremendous career opportunity, so I didn't even try to persuade him to stay." Uchida was given the difficult task of stepping into Brandl's old position.

Houck looks at the ongoing delays and the accompanying changes they bring in the IRS team with equanimity. "I think they're just inevitable. The last thing you want to do is launch the thing before you're ready," he said.

Though the delays are "just life," Houck admits to frustrations. Cracks in the Delta II Heavy solid rocket motor insulation have been a problem. And because the two recent Mars rover launches had only a narrow time window, SIRTF was forced to settle for a later, mid-August launch. In July, the IRS team watched Opportunity, the second rover, lift off on the back of the Delta II Heavy rocket originally intended for SIRTF.

But patience will pay off, the team is hoping, and soon office doors will be papered with images and spectra from SIRTF.

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