I love how "safe mode" for a satellite is basically: "extend solar panels, turn self towards sun, don't do anything unnecessary, wait for further instructions".
I love how "safe mode" for a satellite is basically: "extend solar panels, turn self towards sun, don't do anything unnecessary, wait for further instructions".
My restorative mode is also "turn self towards sun, don't do anything unnecessary".
"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you." Māori Proverb
They should rebrand it as "Praise the Sun" mode. We are sorry, GOES-19 is temporarily unavailable during a planned solar worship break of indefinite length.
The cool thing about geostationary orbits is that they're far enough out that they get 24/7 sun (Except around the equinoxes). We could easily fit a solar worship break in the schedule in between imaging and momentum dumps.
Sure, GEO sats are almost always in full sunlight. But still, if you loose orientation, you could end up with the solar panel wings pointing in the wrong direction or overheating parts of the satellite not meant to be in full sunlight for long time.
> a solar worship break
It'd be easy to optimize with some additional religions too, since from that distance pretty much all possible Earthly [0] holy sites are in the same direction.
[0] I just stumbled onto a fun grammar question! Is it "earthly" (non-supernatural) or is it Earthly (proper-adjective related to the planet), or both? I submit that it's possible to have an "earthly Martian holy-site", and therefore only the capitalized version works here. :p
Earthian, I believe? If you adhere to the same rules as Martian, Venusian, et al. I’d me more inclined to use Earthen, capitalized, though.
Terran
Just don’t point the thing at any maggots.
Initiate Sol Invictus mode