Dear supporters and friends of our COMPASS-1 mission,
first, let me thank you very much for your support in trying to save the life of our COMPASS-1 satellite during the last days, but also during the last years of "routine" operations. It seems that our mission now comes to an end. The projected lifetime of COMPASS-1 was half a year. The tiny guy has outperformed this value by a factor of more than seven. April 28th would have been it's 4th birthday and if it was a human, it would now be about 500 years old (Cubesat-years are short). So, if you have more important things to do (and I guess so), we can not expect you to continue your efforts in saving its live. With your support, you have made things possible that we would never have been able to achieve with our own resources and I appreciate your support very much. So, COMPASS-1, rest in peace. (Nevertheless, if you still want to try to awake it from the dead, feel free to do so.)
I hope that we will soon be able to build and launch COMPASS-2 and that you will be still available, all over the world, as a ground station to command and fly our new bird. We will keep you informed.
Cheers and thanks for all,
Bernd
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Prof. Dr. Bernd Dachwald
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering FH Aachen
University of Applied Sciences