[amsat-bb] ANDE LASERs ON at 04:45 EST over Wash DC

[Robert Bruninga]

At 04:46 Saturday Morning  Eastern Standard Time we will turn on
the lasers on the ANDE MAA satellite as it comes over the
WashingtonDC area.  

This is a horrid hour, and we do not expect anyone to look or to
waste sleep trying, but we figured we should alert the amateur
list just in case... Someone had an interest.

Remember that these are not visible lasers, but 800nm (infrared
below visual red).  They would need a CCD and large telescope to
detect them.  They will be pulsing several times a second for 3
to 5 minutes.  We do not expect any amateurs to see them nor to
even look for them.  

Just wanted to give you a heads up.  Oh, and we had the wrong
names on the wrong objects so the object with the lasers on it
is ANDE MAA which is now object 29664 .

The ANDE telemetry on 145.825 should show when the command is
successful.  You would see a packet coming back from ANDE saying
LEDS WAS OFF (meaning it just switched to ON).  Those of you
with familiarity with the Kantroincs TNC (that is all ANDE is)
will notice that all we did to control the lasers was to hook
them to a switch hooked to the front panel POWER LED.  Since the
Kantrnoics TNC has a LEDS OFF command to save power when the TNC
is in a low power application, we set the default to be LEDS
OFF.  This way, we can use that command to turn on the 6 Watts
worth of lasers easily.

Bob, Wb4APR