ARLA/CLUSTER: KickSat Sprite pode não lançar a "nuvem" de micrósatelites

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

KickSat Sprite deployment may not happen

An unexpected reset of the master clock on KickSat may mean that the
deployment of the 104 Sprite 437 MHz satellites will not take place
before the KickSat CubeSat burns up in the atmosphere

Radio amateur Zac Manchester KD2BHC has posted this update:

First off, I'd like to sincerely thank all of you for your support
over the past two years. KickSat has been a success up to this point
because of you.

As those who've been keeping up with the telemetry data coming in from
KickSat on our mailing list may have noticed, the packets we've been
receiving have changed in the last couple of days. This was due to a
hard reset of the "watchdog" microcontroller on KickSat - the sort of
"reptile brain" of the satellite that manages turning on and off the
rest of the subsystems and keeps the master clock.

It appears the reset happened some time in the morning of Wednesday,
April 30th. The reset doesn't seem to be the result of power issues
(the watchdog should run until the batteries reach 5.5 volts, and
they've been holding steady around 6.5 volts). Instead, it seems the
likely culprit was radiation.

One consequence of the watchdog reset on KickSat is that the
spacecraft's master clock was reset, thus also setting the deployment
countdown for KickSat back to 16 days. That would put the deployment
some time in the morning of May 16th. Unfortunately, it looks like
KickSat will most likely reenter and burn up before the 16th.

We've spent the last couple of days here at Cornell trying to think of
every possible contingency, but it seems there aren't very many
options right now. KickSat's uplink radio, which we could use to
command the deployment, can't turn on unless the batteries reach 8
volts, and it doesn't look like they'll reach that level in time.

While the situation looks a little bleak, there is still some hope
that the batteries may recharge sufficiently to command the satellite.
There is also a small chance that KickSat could remain in orbit until
the 16th, at which point the timer would set off the deployment as
originally planned.

We'll continue tracking KickSat over the next few days with the help
of the ham community, so that we can keep track of its battery voltage
and the Sprite deployment status. I'll post updates here, as usual,
but you can also see the latest data as it comes in on our mailing
list.

Thank you again for your support. I promise that this won't be the end
of the KickSat project.

- Zac

Kicksat Wiki
https://github.com/zacinaction/kicksat/wiki

KickSat mailing list
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/kicksat-gs

Kicksat Updates
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/
kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space/posts