Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 19, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
I had met with the team of STUDSAT-1, India’s second student satellite last September. Here, they had spoken of an attempt to get back control of their student satellite, STUDSAT-1. Last week, the NanoSail-D mission reminded Daniel Fischer about STUDSAT-1 and asked me about the satellite. I sent an email to Prithviraj and Chetan. Prithviraj has emailed yesterday to inform me that the satellite is dead. In his own words:
We had planned to collaborate with ISTRAC to upcommand to StudSat-1 when the cone of window again comes over Bangalore. But then before the satellite also stopped sending the beacon signal and so the satellite died.
The students will now send a close-up report to ISRO. ISRO has told students that the mission will be considered a partial success and they are awaiting a written reply from ISRO. On the future they had this to say on STUDSAT-2:
We have started working on StudSat-2. The initial collaboration between the colleges is done and we have recruited lots of students from the 6 colleges. The concept design of the two satellites is almost frozen. Once its finalized the MoU with ISRO will be done.
Wishing the students best of luck for the STUDSAT-2 project.
Parallel Spirals 