Spitzer oversight

Today was the NASA Spitzer Science Center Oversight Committee meeting. As usual, the day was filled with insights about how you run a large integrated engineering and science operation. The project team particularly called out Lockheed Martin and the Deep Space Network (separately) for praise in how they have both supported the mission. One of the interesting stories of the day is how the mission depends on legacy hardware, including ground-based computers that are way out of date! The project has no programmers, so it has to keep its software running on late-1990s computer hardware!