EO-88, with its 70cm to 2m linear transponder, having spent a trouble free 6 years and 5 months in space, finally re-entered the Earths atmosphere and burned up earlier today. Having originally been launched into a 500km orbit, EO-88 has reduced in altitude rapidly over the past year due to the increased level of solar activity.
Remarkably, some of the last frames of telemetry were captured as the 1U CubeSat passed over the South Western United States.The final 90 seconds show a rapid rise in temperature across all the satellites sub systems. The last frame of data was captured by David WB0IOZ in New Mexico at 18:18:54 UTC showing the antenna temperatures operating about 40 degrees above normal. During the past 2 weeks, 86 stations have contributed EO-88 telemetry to the FUNcube Data Warehouse and this has given us the opportunity to study the behaviour of a functioning CubeSat as it makes its return from Space. Thank you all for your support.
Having provided the last frame of data, David WB0IOZ, wins the telemetry section of the AMSAT-UK re-entry competition and will receive a framed certificate of achievement.
The prediction for the date and time of re-entry was very close with Paul N8HM predicting the 17th July and Larry N1MIW calculating the 21st. However, the winning entry was made by Thomas HB9SKA who correctly predicted the 18th July. Thomas also wins a framed certificate. RIP EO-88. GOODBYE AND THANKS FOR THE FUN!
David G0MRF (AMSAT-UK)