27 Apr
2008
27 Apr
'08
2:24 p.m.
Hello all,
There are reports at http://oscar.dcarr.org/ that AO-16 has gone silent. Should this be the case, there is no cause for alarm. Over the last month AO-16 has gone from full illumination (0 minutes of eclipse) to over 250 minutes of eclipse. Since the bird has no fancy housekeeping code running, a reasonable explanation is that the battery voltage dropped low enough to put the bird into a protected (and silent) mode.
Over the next few days I'll work at collecting telemetry and restoring the voice mode operations of AO-16. Please refrain from transmitting to the satellite until further notice.
On behalf of the AO-16 Command Team,
Mark L. Hammond [N8MH]