NASA's Most Important Satellites: Satellites Talk To All The Other Satellites 

TRW built (mostly) solid birds. One USAF program which I worked in had a flight last 20X its intended lifespan. (most birds in that program exceeded their contracted life span, there were only a few failures)

Gene Kranz's book is pretty good for that

​@@TonyHammitt what is the title?

It truly was an ingenious use of various communications technologies.

Mine too, we used to trade emails with links to space articles and interesting engineering stuff - I so miss seeing his name in my inbox. Sorry for your loss 💔

Nice to meet a fellow spacecraft controller. I work at Ball Aerospace and was one of the mission operations members for the Kepler Space Telescope. I also helped build and launch IXPE which LASP is flying for us.

​@stuartgray5877 I have nothing of value to contribute but just want to say *That's really cool!"

STK made it a hell of a lot easier. Truly stunning piece of kit, worth every penny. Sadly, there is no more free / open source version, so nothing for the amateur to use.

Whatever version of Starlink they are on when Starship starts delivering them, could have phased arrays on the back as well as the front. Then offer satellite to satellite Internet service.

What do you mean so expensive for most missions? We don't have anything better? The statement for most missions is throwing me off. Isnt TDRSS the pronoun of a satellite or is it a type of satellite? That satellite is cool, and all. Yet it is about rhe most hideous thing we've put in space. Reminds me of Star Wars Fan Art. The animation showing the antenna reminded me of some crippled fetus monstrosity spreading its little clawed arms ready to devour the next planet. It is really insane how far we've come. From computer power to just how much we take these satelites for granted in our daily lives.

@@dianapennepacker6854​ I'm talking about this from a spacecraft mission analysis angle - it can be a higher expense service to use TDRSS than other options, mission-dependent. Spacecraft usually need to pay for comms time on the SCaN Networks (NEN and DSN). TDRSS is not necessarily the cheapest option but it sometimes is necessary due to factors such as the spacecraft's orbit, ground station availability, and service per minute or day requirements.

@@dianapennepacker6854NASA charges satellite missions for use of TDRSS, and it is much more expensive than downlinks directly to ground stations during the part of orbits where that is possible. So satellites have to store the data and wait for a downlink pass.

​@@dianapennepacker6854pronoun would be "it/its" , it's an acronym. Also space things don't have to be pretty, aerodynamics ain't important out there

I was wondering if that's what I see there.

Hehehehe

A funny thing to prominently place in a series about wireless communication

Galileo was FUCKED due to the crapped shuttle!!!😢😢😢👎👎👎

That's right, good memory. It was never replaced at a cost of $1 billion dollars each. There is still a hole in orbital coverage where that satellite should be.

Also lost was the ONLY US contribution to study Halley,s comet. There was a TRIPPLE national mission to that comet in 1986!!! US: nada!!!🤮🤮🤮

?

Talk, talk. Tape.

No matter what, got signals on my mind I can never get enough 😎thought I’d finish the lyrics 😂 had to, I’m sorry 😂✌🏼

Pulling off yer pants...Dave's inner monolithic craft..

...Hal really never stood a chance..

I wrote "Exxon Valdez" on a pallet jack at work which leaks oil a lot. I had to explain it to every single one of the twenty- and thirty-something "kids" I work with, who are half my age.

I'm 33, I remember when Exxon Valdez was in the news.

Millennials/Z totally SUCKS!!!👎👎👎

I guess that must be it. The Shuttle was so damn big and entered the atmosphere like a pancake, so I’m sure its “plasma shadow” (or tunnel or whatever you call it) was huge. With a mostly-conical capsule, the plasma trail closes behind it - you can actually see this in the re-entry video from the Orion capsule.

The ONLY good thing for the shuttle is being a hangar queen! 👑👑👑😢😢😢

The first time I went to Australia I visited Parkes. Great fun!

I would think it's so that if a satellite on the ground winds up not being launched for some reason, or maybe has a problen in testing that needs to be fixed so another one goes next, then the one that does fly gets the next sequential number, which likely has some mission planning assigned to that number.

That could be it. The only time I saw that happen during my career was with a DMSP satellite that was launched out of order. For them, a satellite on the ground had an "S-" number and one in flight had an "F-" number. So (for example) S-12 became F-11 on orbit. Maybe it happened more often in the past and that led to the practice?

'TDRS Pass' is amusing since the satellites are geosynchronous :) But I get what you're saying.

@@scottmanley for our latitude the TDRSS sat we were assigned for this test was at fairly low elevation and followed sort of a figure eight in the sky. We had to track it with a 2axis gimbal and for part of this pattern it was too low in the sky and obscured by neighboring buildings. So we had a limited "window".

@@scottmanley And one of these days we might want to have me on your show. I could tell you lots of interesting stories about: Mars Global Surveyor - How we almost blew up the spacecraft at KSC because of a spider, or how the Solar array almost broke off at launch and nearly jeopardized the aerobraking mission. Stardust - how we shipped the spacecraft to KSC for launch with no Avionics in it and how we detected the inverted G-sensor (missed on Genesis) Genesis - What REALLY happened to cause it to plow into the Utah desert and how the mission was nearly lost to a thermal error in the sample return capsule. Mars 98 Orbiter - What REALLY happened to cause that spacecraft to crash into the atmosphere of Mars. Deep Impact - How we messed up the focus of the High-Resolution Imager (similar to Hubble) then FIXED in in flight without a focus mechanism. Or how a MISTAKE on my part during the last 2 weeks before encounter caused us to find a fatal flaw that would have made us miss the comet entirely. Kepler Space Telescope - How I was likely personally responsible for the early wheel failures due to an anomaly during ground test. NOAA-20 - How we had an earthquake on the pad at VAFB and got the data from the onboard fiber-optic gyros that showed the entire rocket rocking back and forth on the pad for 2 minutes after the quake. This was due to retest because of a LIGHTNING STORM (at VAFB???) that hit within 5 miles of the spacecraft in the week before launch. IXPE Xray Telescope - How we damaged the deployment boom during I&T and had to leave the whole "payload" hanging in the air from a crane for over a week. And I am sure I can think of many others.

Do you have a blog? I'd certainly intrigued!

Tony! When I saw "ERBS" and "Fisher Building" I knew this was a Ball Employee! How are you doing?

Doing well Stu, Retired, now going for my Flight Instructor rating. Good to hear from you! How are you doing?

Doing well, retired aerospace now working on Flight Instruction@@stuartgray5877

@@tonycash7686 I am still working (mostly remote). I helped build and launched IXPE and worked most recently on WSF-M and might get to go to one more launch in a few months. I am glad you get to live your dream in retirement - I have had health challenges lately and will be interested to see what happens with the buyout by BAE that will hit us early next year. You must have spoken with Pedja B. he was software-test/manager at Ball. He was an instructor for acrobatic flight and even trained Dave when he was Pres. of BATC.

There's a small additional panel added to balance out the solar pressure on all the apertures. This the name "solar sail".

I believe they do the exact same thing with NOAA and GOES satellites, they also get numbered once they are operational. This may also have to do with decoupling contract names used in procurement from operational names. Like you said, nice to have numbers with no gaps, and in the correct order.

That was my thought as well.

So, why wasn’t TDRS-C named TDRS-2?

"And you would want sequential numbers" Too bad they didn't think ahead for Project Gemini ; )

@@scottmanleyi assumed the pre-launch letter system only came into effect after the loss of TDRS-2 during the challenger disaster

That's fascinating, it explains why the dish folding mechanism was changed between generations.

They did a lot more in hardware, like de-multiplexing multiple streams of data. They also recorded data then processed it offline.

Yeah they recorded it at high frequency and analysed any parts of a given transmission at a later time. It may have been processed by the hardware in real-time but any analysis was not - for the reasons you gave.

That.

Two part answer. 1.) SpaceX has to pay for that NASA communications service. SpaceX has their own global coverage stations (2 former NASA dishes in Boca Chica; others). 2.) TDRS did have some small blackout areas, between TDRS coverage (Zone of exclusions). This depends launch and orbital inclination (Shuttle ~51°).

nice

IRBM? Intermediate-range ballistic missile? Had to google that acronym, never heard it before. I found a news article about "Israeli fighter jet intercepts cruise missile outside Eilat" is that the one you mean?

@@lawrencefrost9063 a cruise missile flies under active power and low velocity in the lower atmosphere the whole way. An IRBM leaves the atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory at extreme velocity.

@@lawrencefrost9063 there were cruise missiles but also a purely ballistic missile fired by the rebels in Yemen that was intercept above the Karman line by an Arrow 3 missile.

@@SierraSierraFoxtrot I see, thanks for the clarification, both of you.

That would certainly cause a lot of consternation

"Screwdriver shot"!

@@marcmcreynolds2827 Or an oil can in a factory.

Hang around looking busy like a kerbal walking around the floor of the VAB

For minutes.

Yeah the supposed moon landings…..hahahahahahahahahaha……

shut@@wattsmichaele

@@scottmanley ????

@@sjTHEfirst He said "for minutes". That obviously means there were cameras left behind, they worked for a few minutes after the astronauts left.

Frankly, the 1st generation TDRS were more robust in the ability to customize beam forming as new ideas and techniques were developed compared to the 2nd and 3 generation TDRS where by the beam forming is hard coded.

TDRS is like the near space network ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4aRr4bYiJFM.htmlsi=OgwuDPKp11W7h5fY

Suggest reading the engineering papers

What do you mean “not be focusing your energy enough”? The crafts don’t learn pointing angles at the time of transmission. The antennas already know where to send the signal (within tolerance) based on predictions from previous passes. But I may be misunderstanding what you’re getting at

At least for higher-altitude LEO satellites.

English please.

@@kiereluurs1243 yeah haha nasa just awarded the launch for the next mars mission in august to blue origin. how likely do you think that launch will go off without a hitch?

And why was it launched 1983, if the moon mission was 1969?