Because of its origins do you think we will see any pictures of it before launch?
Quote from: Star One on 03/06/2017 05:06 pmBecause of its origins do you think we will see any pictures of it before launch?There is an odd and confusing story about these satellites. Back in 1998 the NRO rather unexpectedly allowed a film crew to show one in the final stages of assembly. They also released still photos of it both in the clean room and in a deployed configuration (that was photoshopped to depict it in orbit). I later filed a FOIA request for images of the antenna deployment sequence and got it. So they have released photos and a diagram before. But they then obviously changed their policy after 1998 and decided to release no more info.
Quote from: Blackstar on 03/06/2017 06:41 pmQuote from: Star One on 03/06/2017 05:06 pmBecause of its origins do you think we will see any pictures of it before launch?There is an odd and confusing story about these satellites. Back in 1998 the NRO rather unexpectedly allowed a film crew to show one in the final stages of assembly. They also released still photos of it both in the clean room and in a deployed configuration (that was photoshopped to depict it in orbit). I later filed a FOIA request for images of the antenna deployment sequence and got it. So they have released photos and a diagram before. But they then obviously changed their policy after 1998 and decided to release no more info.Is that about the same time that they released an image of part of a Lacrosse satellite?
That's a lot of antennas. I would have expected one for talking to the satellite and on for the ground station. Any ides why there are more?
Quote from: Blackstar on 03/06/2017 06:41 pmQuote from: Star One on 03/06/2017 05:06 pmBecause of its origins do you think we will see any pictures of it before launch?There is an odd and confusing story about these satellites. Back in 1998 the NRO rather unexpectedly allowed a film crew to show one in the final stages of assembly. They also released still photos of it both in the clean room and in a deployed configuration (that was photoshopped to depict it in orbit). I later filed a FOIA request for images of the antenna deployment sequence and got it. So they have released photos and a diagram before. But they then obviously changed their policy after 1998 and decided to release no more info.If the antennas were "photoshopped", isn't it possible that the depicted array had nothing to do with reality? It does look a bit goofy to me on first examination. - Ed Kyle
The HS-376 bus is really old, and I am not sure if it would be cost effective to try to use this. There may be no one left at Boeing who would know how to fix it.
Because of the Boeing reorganization and facility consolidation through 2020, there are other surplus/spare satellites that have never flown are soon to be moved out of storage and offered to agencies such as NASA in the near future.
Only those qualified to prepare / flight qualify this for launch could process it, and likewise few would possess the resources to operate it. Those that would able to do it when it was built in the 1980's, would likely be retired if still alive.Am at a loss to have any idea what to do with such other than decorate a museum.In its prime, yes you just might be able to use the steerable high gain antenna clusters to a re-purposed need. It might be made to function in a harsher thermal/radiation environment. Could see how one could modify the earth orientation attitude sensors/control to maintain attitude around Moon/Mars. Could modify operations to support such roles. Could alter the hga/amplfiers/... for the new application, perhaps the feeds too. But then it would have to be put through the validation/qualification/frameworks and thermal/vac/spin, with all the hardware and update support harness/control. All that stuff has probably been gone for over a decade.Next, how do you get it there? Spinners usually are spun up and injected with a PAM that's discarded, and then its own propulsion is used to coax it into the correct slot. And the spinner needs to spin to function, so in the "cruise" it will have to spin, and yet to enter Moon/Mars orbit (Mars would need star trackers, with the Moon you could do am orientation handoff) you'll need to brake/circularize, in addition to considerable station keeping props requirements.You might finesse the Moon, but usually you'd require a full up cruise stage to make Mars.Now, for Arctic/Antarctic coverage, that's a similar mission, but are the ground stations and channels like what you'd wish to support? Is the cost of maintaining such antiques worthwhile? Is there enough excess bandwidth and adjacency from commercial SSO operators that might be used as a relay?
Quote from: russianhalo117 on 03/07/2017 04:48 amBecause of the Boeing reorganization and facility consolidation through 2020, there are other surplus/spare satellites that have never flown are soon to be moved out of storage and offered to agencies such as NASA in the near future.I am going to guess all government (military) ones as I can't imagine commercial entities just leaving payloads on the ground unflown.
The question is what NASA could do with this relic, not what some random commercial operator could do.Like many here, I think that using this for a lunar orbital relay in some sort of high lunar polar orbit would be interesting.
Quote from: Star One on 03/07/2017 05:56 amQuote from: russianhalo117 on 03/07/2017 04:48 amBecause of the Boeing reorganization and facility consolidation through 2020, there are other surplus/spare satellites that have never flown are soon to be moved out of storage and offered to agencies such as NASA in the near future.I am going to guess all government (military) ones as I can't imagine commercial entities just leaving payloads on the ground unflown.I would not make that assumption. It is possible some commercial entities purchased a spare and held it in storage in case of a launch accident or on orbit failure. One of the Sirius XM satellites ended up in the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Museum because the merger of the two companies made it excess. That one was sitting around somewhere before they donated and took the tax write-off.