Holding Breath for STMsat-1 Reboot at Midnight

STMsat-1, a CubeSat built by elementary school students at the Saint Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington VA, has been silent since its launch from the ISS on May 16. It has been tracked/identified and assigned the International Designator 1998-067HW, or NORAD ID 41476.  It can be clearly seen in the NASA photo along with two other birds (a pair of NODES satellites) launched at the same time.

STMsat1 Photo

After listening for a week with no luck, the powers that be have decided it is time for a Reboot, which is due to happen tonight at midnight EDT.  Hopefully SSTV signals on 437.800 MHz will appear shortly after that.

Since it was launched from the ISS, ejected into a slightly lower orbit, its path is very similar.  In fact it simply appears about 7 minutes BEFORE (gaining about a minute a day since launch) the ISS will pass over the same location. The image below shows how close the orbits are a week after ejection from the ISS:

Screen Shot 2016-05-23 at 2.20.33 PM

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