Ukraine cannot yet boast of a large number of satellites in orbit. Only recently, SpaceX launched the first government space vehicle in a long time. And now he has problems.
Ukrainian state satellite “Jan 2-30” was launched into orbit on January 13, 2022 on the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Shortly information appeared, which successfully established communication with the satellite. And now it is known that “Sich” has problems.
Problems in “Sich”
By sending telemetry, “Sich” confirmed that everything is fine with him and the devices are working normally. But it turned out that the peculiarities of its launch into orbit did not allow establishing a stable connection. Due to this, the orientation of the satellite in space was disturbed – probably “Sich” could not receive the appropriate commands from the control center.
As a result of this confusion, “Sich” received such an orientation, when the solar panels do not receive direct sunlight, but light reflected from the Earth’s surface or sunlight at a small angle. Probably, the satellite turned out to be oriented towards the planet “upside down”. Obviously, in such a situation, the device cannot receive enough energy for full functioning and, most importantly, to restore orientation in space.
“Sich 2-30” independently switched to the “energy saving” mode, which will allow it to literally wait for spatial orientation to be restored due to the effects of the Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields and the influence of atmospheric particles. Specialists expect that the orientation will be restored in 1-2 months, and then the satellite will receive enough energy to make the final correction of the spatial orientation and start work.
