I remember them being forthright about it. They also said, and I can believe it, that the 4 days the satellite spent in orbit were very useful to the customer. It was a prototype, and there's a big difference between putting on a shaker table, baking and freezing it, putting it in a vacuum chamber ... and actually putting it in space.
So Orbcomm was able to figure out a lot of stuff and I'm sure the price was very nice.
Comments
IIRC they weren't exactly open about losing a satellite in a ISS resupply mission[1].
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-1#Secondary_payload
They only "lost" the sattelite because NASA rejected their attempts at raising its orbit.
I remember them being forthright about it. They also said, and I can believe it, that the 4 days the satellite spent in orbit were very useful to the customer. It was a prototype, and there's a big difference between putting on a shaker table, baking and freezing it, putting it in a vacuum chamber ... and actually putting it in space.
So Orbcomm was able to figure out a lot of stuff and I'm sure the price was very nice.