MXL (The Michigan Exploration Laboratory) Grifex update: 28-06-2015

Our primary challenge in the past couple of weeks has been cold temperatures aboard the satellite. You may have noticed increased beacon frequency and higher transmit power – this was to keep the battery above the 0 deg. C minimum safe charge temperature.

We have completed several more MARINA runs with differing features, however, we are waiting on confirmation from JPL of a good image before we can release any images. Additionally, we have been able to pinpoint increased voltage drops during beacon transmissions as one source of MARINA aborts, so we have applied the appropriate mitigations (no beacons during MARINA runs) in order to reduce the overall number of aborts.

Source: MXL Ops