I believe that the COMPASS-1 team reached a long way to mobilize a volunteer effort of skilled amateurs to help recover a failing satellite. This is one more story for the ages; how the Amateur community was trusted by being provided open control codes, to do what they do best....provide the diversity of location and the perseverance inherent in the hobby to bring an orbiting object back to life.
These new "control operators" stand up with those special few who were able to capture signals from an antenna-less Suitsat-1, 200 miles distant and report progress to the professional team who had launched the project.
Amateur does not mean un-professional, it just means we don't get paid for what we enjoy doing.
Roger WA1KAT
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Cresswell" alancresswell@xtra.co.nz To: "'amsat-bb'" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 5:27 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: COMPASS-1 support at the West Coast
Hi All,
I want to fully endorse the comments from Bob and Bruce. I have been working with the Compass team for the last few months and it has been a
most
enjoyable experience. Their willingness to provide feedback, telemetry decoding software and general information is I think unique in the Cubesat world. Beyond that it is the only amateur satellite as far as I know that actually invites active participation in satellite command and control operations - an opportunity normally restricted to a select few. It
presents
an opportunity to try something quite different from the normal run of the mill amateur satellite operations and I for one believe that Compass has been an excellent addition to the ranks of amateur satellites.
Alan ZL2BX