• DharkStare@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Reading this article made me wonder if a satellite can be turned off and then back on. I’ve never really thought about how satellites are maintained and serviced. You can’t exactly send IT up there to fix things.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You reboot the satellite, then it hits you with /sbin/init does not exist. Bailing out, you are on your own now. Good luck.

      • masterofn001
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        1 year ago

        Linux has some dead pan humour system failure messages. Keeps things fun when everything goes to shit.

        I did hit that one once. Or twice.

        • SGG@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Make sense given it’s open source.

          Despite how much government and business use it gets, when you have someone like Linus torvalds at the helm you will get fun things.

    • ramielrowe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      At it’s most basic, a satellite will have two systems. A highly robust command and control system with a fairly omnidirectional antenna. And then the more complex system that handles the payload(s). So yea, if the payload system crashes, you can restart it via C&C.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      nasa seems to reboot things so I don’t see why not. When they do though I think its really nail biting while they hope to hear from it again when it boots up.

    • Rhodin@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Normally, they’re not fixed. They just let it crash very literally and send up a new one. NASA’s apparently working on repairable satellites.