sg157 stopped communicating with the basestation sometime late last Friday (06/26/09). sg157 disappeared for 4 days, and then finally called in Tuesday evening. Anatoli and Justin handled it like pros, and figured out that the glider had happily continued to dive and receive GPS fixes, during it’s seclusion. This means there’s nothing wrong with the antenna and that the antenna is getting far enough out of the water. It also means that there’s nothing mechanically wrong with the glider.

The problem appears to be isolated to the Iridium satellite phone communications.

sg157 has been calling in more consistently since then, but misses a scheduled call in every now and then …

Out plan is to continue to fly sg157 onshore. If we get another big disappearance, then we’ll have to figure out an emergency recovery. If things continue to go OK, then we’ll send Laura out at the beginning of August to put sg158 in before the MOOMZ cruise, and we’ll send Justin out at the end of August to recover sg157.