• DharkStare@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      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@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      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.