On Apr 15 2011, R Oler wrote:
There are LOTS of reasons that the bird could have failed, in my viewpoint the BEST one is that the battery has some issues. Operating the vehicle in a thermal environment that it was not designed for would be a first guess, followed by some sort of "crib death" issue, and next comes parts connected wrong.
In any event the failure does not bode well for a successful sat deployment.
See if this makes it on the board. Robert G. Oler WB5MZO _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
One small consolation is that if the ISS crew can't get it working before tossing it into space, it could (possibly) be brought back to Earth on a future return trip to be diagnosed and repaired on the ground.
But let's hope it is something simple to fix up on the ISS and that someone on the crew can take a little time to fix it.
But I also understand that none of those 3 scenarios are guaranteed (easy to fix, time to fix it, or return it to Earth).
John P. Toscano, W0JT