From a Feb 7 report...
Today we received multiple confirmations that the Aerospace picosats
were successfully deployed. Last night, we attempted to bypass
Opal's failing transmitter problem. Commands were sent to Opal but
no detection of Aerospace picos was made.
This morning, we again sent the bypass commands and then noticed that
the high pitch noise on Opal's transmissions had faded. We then
successfully logged in and verified that our telemetry indicated
pico launch. It did indeed. However, Aerospace did not hear their
picos.
This afternoon, SSN tracked a new object near Opal and provided two
line tracking elements.
This evening, Aerospace acquired the pico beacons and decoded data.
Their time stamp indicates that we launched yesterday evening with
the transmitter work around.
This is excellent news. It confirms all Opal systems are functional
and that we can bypass the transmitter issue.
Other pico launch times are TBD. We are working to get time back
at the Big Dish and competing with NASA/JPL and the Mars mission.
We are also discussing the possibility of publishing the command
sequence to fire picos to enable HAMs to attempt a pico launch.
We'll know more details tomorrow.
So, the world's first picos have been launched! More soon to follow!
