Hi all,
although as usual no immediate confirmation, the second arming command should have been sent now.
We'll receive confirmation of this from the next passage over Russia, happening at 06:12 MDT, 05:12 CEST.

For you to know, the mission runs in Moscow Decree Time (MDT), as all Russian missions. It is UTC+3 or CEST+1.

YES2 is on, up and running!
We see no anomalies in the data coming from Canada, indicating that the power is on and the system is running nominally.

The OBC is at about -1°C, so finally all the doubts about it are solved, YES2 is up and running!

The arming command cannot be confirmed yet, as it came after the canadian pass, next info about that around 6:30 MDT, 5:30 CEST. 

Here you see Vladimir, the ESA Deputy Mission Manager here in Moscow (while Antonio is in Kiruna) speaking to the Kiruna operators. They just received the data from Canada, now the processing starts, then we'll be able to evaluate the YES2 power on.

 

YES2 Arming now, YTK10 sent. Still no confirmation from the Canadian ground station.

YES2 is on, now waiting for confirmation from the Canadian Space station data, to come in about half an hour.

Live from mission control:

Hi all, here we are for a live coverage of the YES2 mission!
Good morning by your beloved Fabio!

We are in Mission Control, from YES2 we have (alph) Erik, Fabio, Marco, Michiel, Roger. A number of other people is over here in Mission Control in Moscow, I'll give insights later on, together with pics at http://public.fotki.com/fiabo/yes2-moscow/

 

Marco and me successfully completed the final mission timeline, basically about 20 seconds difference from our previous estimate, but that can be equivalent to 130 km on the ground (landing site of Fotino). The final timeline is based on the last and most accurate mission data. It took about 1 hour to produce the timeline, and 0:45 hr more to discuss and agree the details with the Russian operators, so all neatly within the 2 hour window.

People around the world (Alaska, Chile, Antarctica) are preparing for observing the tether tomorrow with telescopes and videocamera's.

To be sure, YES2 is still switched off. On the thermal side, RedShift calculations based on their DIMAC measurements on-board Foton show a rather random attitude behavior, evolving slowly from one extreme to another. Unfortunately, we are dependent on having some luck. YES2 is in the shadow of the big Foton vehicle, but receives no heat from it, as it is not in thermal contact. Then we have been switched off for 11 days in the cold vacuum of space, only occasionally seeing the sun. The only way to deal with this is to wrap the satellite inside insulation, which we did, and thus try to average out the extremes from (-150 to 120 C!) and get a mild average. Overall YES2 is quite cold, so fingers crossed that we haven't passed the allowable thresholds when we switch on. I let you know more by update in this article once we get new info on attitude.

 

What have we done here in Moscow the last few days?

• We are been analyzing the attitude data from RedShift/Dimac to update thermal predictions to determine the best moment for YES2 power on.
• We prepared the off-nominal case scenario's, so we know better what to do when some surprise occurs during the mission. Basically, before ejection, we can switch YES2 off, but after ejection it is better to wait.
• Yesterday Marco prepared, as a final test, the mission timeline, based on the Foton orbital data, in a race against the clock. Monday, at 11:45 CET, we will get the final Foton orbital data, and by 13:45 we have to have calculated the YES2 mission timeline, as it will then be uploaded to Foton to be performed Tuesday morning. Timeline Tuesday 25th of September, time in CET:

4:00 AM - Switch On YES2

Hello everybody,

we are collecting the YES2 video's to make a short documentary of YES2. Also we collect all papers, and would like to refer to a selection in our YES2 overview paper at the IAC this year. Can you email us a list of what you have available, in terms of papers (conference, journal) or video's. Provide references to papers and description of video's you would like to submit. Do not send yet the actual file. Deadline end of this week.

Michiel & Erik

1. Follow the groundtrack and attitude of Foton on the Virtual Foton site of Volgaspace: http://acvrb.ssau.ru (or through www.volgaspace.ru).

You need to register, but that is really an easy step to do. We are not sure if the orbit is really correct, we are trying to find out.

2. http://www.heavens-above.com/  [register and search for satellite. US Space Command ID 32058, International Designation Code 2007-040. It will provide you nicely with viewing opportunities and other goodies. I couldn't find Foton-M3 yet, but you can find YES1 under YES]