Adventures

The YES2 project gave rise to many adventures. Marcin, Greg, Anton and Denis, a joint Polish-Russian team, was in place inside the nominal landing region in Kazakhstan, to catch a radio signal from Fotino, including re-entry data and homing beacon, and with plans for recovery based on ARGOS data. For this a mobile ground station was developed and of course agreed frequency of 437 MHz. Worries about transportation difficulties and harsh conditions were only partly true and were easily overcome by the pragmatic, resolvent crew. Astana is an ultra modern vibrant city and the roads are plentiful and good. But it was cold and rainy, and these conditions had to be endured for many hours, as Fotino was expected to descend from space on its northeastward trajectory over Kazakhstan.

Once it was clear that Fotino would not deorbit as planned, an attempt was made to establish contact in a southwestward part of an orbit later that day. Fotino was not contacted, however, the link budget predicted that already to be rather unlikely, so no conclusions could at that time be drawn about Fotino's whereabouts. This effort was not planned or endorsed by ESA, but a YES2 bonus effort initiated by the students themselves with help from Delta-Utec and a volunteer expert.

Marcin Stolarski reports:

"Recovery mission short raport.
24.09.2007 night recovery team gets antenna end other devices of Mobile Ground Station system and start travel near to calculated landing place of Fotino. About 10am local time (UTC +7) we confirm our position by satellite phone and start mounting MGS. Ours station is big antenna, 3 receivers, 2 computers, mp3 recorder, compass, GPS, lot of cables and other devices, weight is about 50kg. At 13pm we test systems and call that we are ready for receiving data. From 14:30 to 15:30 we receiving only noise (theoretically landing time was 13:58). At 16:00 we call with this information and start umounting MGS. At 17:30 we was ready for searching recovery capsule and call to gets data from ARGOS system but we receive only command to mount MGS again because Fotino stay in space and we can try to receive MASS-FLOYD communication. At 19:00 we were ready and we receive noise from 19:00 to 20:00. At 20:00 we call with this information and start umounting MGS again. At 21:00  we finish umounting and come back to city. Whether don’t help as because was raining and working with electronic outdoor was not easy. So maybe we didn’t receive any signals and didn’t found Fotino, but we learn that organizing MGS in Kazakhstan in not easy, we have lot of problems with transport our devices, weather, transport etc. This experience helps as in next missions, and now we can mount and umount MGS really fast. "