The spacecraft is not responding to any communications, and engineers at the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos have decided that the craft had reverted to a safe mode after the engine of the Fregat rocket stage that was to propel her from a low to a higher orbit around Earth failed to ignite.

Well there's your problem. You gotta restart it in safe mode WITH networking, otherwise you won't ever be able to reach it.

cgraves67: Satellites are female now?

Underage females to boot. Boobs, and to come degree penises, throws off the centripetal force, and ends up making it look like a seizing rave dancer.

Since it is oriented to the Sun, sunlight should be pushing on it more than it would if it was orbiting without its solar power vanes aligned to collect sunlight. This means that it needs to adjust for the pressure of sunlight (and perhaps solar wind). Perhaps it is programmed to give itself a compensating boost to counter the slight push away from the Sun and to maintain a stable orbit around the Earth even though it is not receiving orders to do so.

I doubt if the push of sunlight would be enough to force it to adjust its orbit enough to stay in orbit longer, but it's possibilie that such a correction is programmed in, and that the program is adaptable enough to take into consideration deviation in the orbit from other causes, in which case it is programmed to keep itself homeostatically in orbit as long as the solar power and thrusters are functioning properly.

plcow: Also, the one last night making fun of Penn State (how the heck do they make episodes so quickly?)

You need to watch "Six Days to South Park"

Shows exactly how they make the show and crank one out in a week. I think the closest call they've had Comedy Central recieving the show about 2 hours before airtime.

The craft booted into safe mode... duh, if you want to talk with the thing remotely, you need to boot it into Safe mode with networking!!!

LesserEvil: The craft booted into safe mode... duh, if you want to talk with the thing remotely, you need to boot it into Safe mode with networking!!!

[securitytoolvirus.com image 539x279]

Aaaaand... we're done.

YodaBlues: male satellites maintain a geo-synchronous low-earth orbit like this...