> won't this be their 3rd satellite Indeed! And with all respect to Brian, 500 km is not a high altitude for a first satellite launch, it's pretty typical; the accuracy needed for sun-sync depends on *how long* you need the orbit not to drift - I'm sure a degree or so is just fine for them, so if it weren't for the need to yaw it wouldn't be a big deal - and I don't think the ground network needed to pick up the occasional burst of telemetry from a satellite is that hard, about half of the universities which have launched cubesats have managed to do it successfully! Again, their standards for declaring successful exploitation of the data may not be the same as yours... It's certainly an ambitious attempt, but I think it's clear that the internal rhetoric and political system pushes them to attempt things that are a bit beyond what they can actually pull off. Not that that would ever happen over here *cough*JWST*cough* .... - Jonathan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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