Hello Peter and thanks for the reply...sorry mine was so late, busy afternoon.
you answered my question. I had "heard" that with the arrays folded or based on some failures...that AO-40 did not have 360 degree coverage in solar cells around its spin access.
If that was the case then the battery was going to be essential for any type of recovery...but since it is not accurate then I agree if the battery will open (do a "seven") then the only question would be the Solar angle.
Thank you for a very good and straight forward answer 73
Robert WB5MZO
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:30:03 +0200 From: peter.guelzow@kourou.de To: orbitjet@hotmail.com CC: samudra.haque@gmail.com; amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Re: Can we get them to fix AO-40 first then?
Hi Robert,
that's indeed the big question... We do not know in which attitude the spacecraft is.. is it still spinning very slowly or tumbling? What is the Solar-ß-Angel? If the S/C has a good orientation to the sun and the battery opens, than there should be enough power to operate the IHU and Beacon etc... do some magnetorquing to improve attitude. Something like this was done when AO-10 was hit by the last rocket stage, spinning the wrong direction with sun directly on top and almost no power... Unfolding the solar panels would give very high power only when they are oriented towards the sun. With folded solar arrays, all panels around the satellite can still see the sun around it's spin axis. Only when it shines on top or bottom, we will have problems...
73s Peter
Rocky Jones wrote:
Peter.
In the current configuration (or the last known config) of the vehicle does the vehicle have sufficient solar illumination to "spin" and maintain the DC busses without a battery?
Robert WB5MZO
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