Hi Trevor,
All you say is true of course but there could be a possibility to provide a microwave tracking beacon that would be especially useful during the long ...maybe 15 month (depending on the type of propulsion eventually decided upon), cruise phase in addition to the period whilst in lunar orbit and help to populate our presently under-utilised uwave allocations..
And then if it had a really sensitive GPS receiver..as already demonstrated by AO40 out to 60+k kilometres, modulating the signal, it would be even better...sorry mission creep strikes again:)
cheers
Graham G3VZV
----- Original Message ----- From: "Trevor" m5aka@yahoo.co.uk To: "AMSAT BB" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 9:53 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: NASA's American Student Moon Orbiter...
--- On Wed, 2/7/08, Dave hartzell hartzell@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25839 http://asmo.arc.nasa.gov/
Wouldn't it be fun to have a transponder on this! ;-)
Fun yes, but dare I say it, a waste of precious Volunteer resources.
All lunar orbits are inherently unstable and will impact after a couple of years. The link budget requirements would not attract a mass user base.
I suspect the number of Technically Capable volunteers is already being thinly stretched in trying to provide both the primary objective Phase-IV Lite (funded by Federal Government dollars) and the secondary objective the Eagle HEO.
73 Trevor M5AKA
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