zlacker

>>duck+(OP)
The date of the video is the most impressive to me here. It says “Sept. 30, 2021” both as the date of the article and the date of the video. If this is not a mistake that means they managed to deliver the video from the hurricane to the internet in less than 24 hours.

Why is this impressive? Either they beamed it out through satelites, which is notoriously hard from an unstable platform on big waves, or they recovered the saildrone and obtained the footage directly which is equally impressive in or around a hurricane.

All around if the dating of the footage is correct it is very impressive to me.

>>krisof+79
Based on the photo from the NASA website ([1]), they use a Thales Satellite modem ([2]). My best guess it's VesseLINK 700 ([3]) that uses Iridium Certus constellation ([4]) and costs around $8K ([5]).

Key Features:

* Robust, Light-Weight Communications for at Sea Operations

* Certus 700 Services (352 kbps Up/704 kbps Down & 256 kbps Streaming Capable)

*100% Global Satellite Coverage and Low Latency for Critical Data and Voice Communications

1. https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/wp-content/uploads/s...

2. https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/market-specific-solut...

3. https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/default/files/database/doc...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

5. https://seatech.systems/product/thales-vesselink-700-for-iri...

>>krasin+Ja
Just stick a Starlink antenna on it, dummies. /s

>>moffka+mY
Noting the satire marker, I’ll just say for completeness: Starlink consumes 100W continuously to operate its phased array beam and the computation requires to drive it. That’s too much power for a sail drone.