Devastating news

Remember last week I said there was a once in a life time opportunity to work Clipperton Island via IO-117 satellite and my prediction that satellites are fragile birds? Little did I know that that a day later, S5lab, the owner of IO-117 would issue the following communique:

The decision to retire a fully functional satellite is absolutely crazy! There is no other satellite with such large footprint, and there are no plans for another one to be placed in similar orbit any time soon. We are devastated.

Over the weekend, a number of organisations including AMSAT as well as a number of national space and telecommunications agencies have offered their logistic and financial support to keep the Green Cube on the air, however, as I type this, there are no signs that GC will continue as a digipeater beyond February 5!

As individuals, we are doing our best to lobby S5lab via Change.org but as passionate as it is, our petition may not be enough to make the Italians change their decision.

S5Lab is Sapienza Space Systems and Space Surveillance Laboratory with a research team at Sapienza University of Rome. Primarily aimed at developing space systems (nano-satellites, stratospheric payloads, etc.) and at managing a network of optical observatories for space debris surveillance.