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One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated.

A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they'd been providing had been "of exceptionally high quality."

The observatories provide detailed carbon dioxide measurements across various locations, allowing scientists to get a detailed glimpse of how human activity is affecting greenhouse gas emissions.

(Ex NASA employee) David Crisp said it "makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," pointing out it costs only $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, a tiny fraction of the agency's $25.4 billion budget.

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[-] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

They at least use parts of the kernel or tooling that they strip out and re-compile for their specific systems.

I know that the computers in some of these satellites use super custom hardware, and Linux can be compiled to run on basically anything. Here's a spec that explicitly uses the kernel on nano sats

That one doesn't use sshd, but it does use UDP and an internal Ethernet switch to orchestrate all the components and communicate with the ground using some combo of radio bands as serial interfaces.

In that case, of you knew the codes you could gain control of it using a big enough ham radio lol

They do also tend to transmit the data unencrypted (for civilian weather and such) so if you can tune into the sat, you could pull images with one of the highest pings imaginable

[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago

In that case, of you knew the codes you could gain control of it using a big enough ham radio lol

izutsumi-idea Idea for a movie!

this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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