Hi guys, as you know we’ve been commanding the CubeBug-1. In the last days we sent a command to turn off the attitude control until we manually turn it on again. Our theory is that now that the S/C is spinning so fast the magnetorquers are actuating at full power (100% duty cycle), and hence consuming more power than they normally do. This also coincides with old observations that suggested that disappearance periods where preceded by fast spinning.
So, we disabled spinning… and it did apparently make a difference.
It’s not enough time to be sure, but Mario just sent us an audio file from where I could get a two partial decodes:
Uptime: 24h19m01s, Mode: MISSION
FreeHeapSize: 13320 bytes [0x00003408]
Power: I2C Error
Battery: low_voltage count: 0
Thermal: I2C Error
Packet too short
Uptime: 24h19m33s, Mode: MISSION
Though I2C is broken, we can see the satellite’s been up for mora than 24hs. And it’s still in MISSION mode. It’s the first time we’ve seen an uptime larger than 16hs
It’s in MISSION because Adrian sent the command to take a picture (we sadly could not decode it, and I believe that the I2C was broken before the picture, so the picture was really never taken, as I2C is used to turn on and off the camera and other subsystems).
The CubeBug-1 resets itself 16hs after the last received command, but as we are sending commands from Bariloche in every pass, the satellite has not reset.
Now, it’s still in MISSION, meaning it has not changed into LOW_POWER, confirmed by the LOW_POWER counter in zero.