3 ms·
It's not obvious to me why the two (spin-stabilization and hibernation) would have to be coupled. Could it be due to antennas that are required for communicati
by 3JPLW 9y ago
It's not obvious to me why the two (spin-stabilization and hibernation) would have to be coupled. Could it be due to antennas that are required for communication during active mission control?
That said, there's a whole lot of nothing out there. It makes sense to put the craft into a safer mode that has less risk of failure when there's nothing for it to do.
- barkingcat 9y agoMost likely while spin stabilizing, many instrument packages that require some kind of orientation are useless, so it's better to turn them off - and also, to save their operational lifetimes (if something has a certain # hours of operating life it makes sense to turn them off to save life)