Senaste nytt frn ANS om Echo. Nu brjar ven S-sndaren at testas:
Some stations have noted the S testing and reported results, which is appreciated by the command team. The command team has been watching the temperature closely when the S Tx is on. Since it is only about 30 percent
efficient a lot of power must be dissipated in the transmitter and its enclosure. So far the temperature rise, while quite noticeable, has not been a problem.
AO-51 continues to spin and tumble at a relatively rapid rate. In one axis it s about 15 seconds per rev. While these rates are high they are not a problem for the satellite. They do create some fades on the downlink that
will go away once the tumble is damped out. Because of the high rates it is likely to take a while for that stable mode to be achieved. The torq rod has also not yet oriented the satellite to the earth s magnetic field.
A new section of the telemetry archive will be open soon with whole orbit data that has been collected by the command stations. Some of it is at a rate of 3 seconds between samples. That high sample rate data is what has
been being used to determine the spin and attitude. Once on-line that section of the site will be available for anyone to download archived telemetry.
http://coloradosatellite.com/echo
Approximately 2500 launch campaign pictures are now available for browsing on the web thanks to Chuck Green, N0ADI. The pictures can be viewed at
http://bach.as.arizona.edu/gallery/echo
There has been some speculation about modes for future experimenter Wednesday. While AO-51 is a very flexible and capable spacecraft, it is still too early to determine exactly what the final operational parameters will be on Wednesdays or during normal operations.
Klla: ANS 199