Eryn WellsArtemis II splashdown was incredible! Perfect. š
Now if only they could get the dang phones working.
Iām confused why they need the sat phones when the radio seems to be working perfectly well?
A. Walton @ Mastodon@erynofwales short answer is: The Navy. Telephony is designed to work in areas of congestion. The Navy's coordinating between a half dozen RHIBs, four helicopters, several spotter planes, and the recovery ship. Satphone handles frequency allocations automatically without needing the coordination.
There are some good Apollo retrospectives that talk about the communications problems they had with their radios. And Artemis is apparently facing many of the same issues.
@erynofwales earlier on the broadcast they mentioned 550 people are involved in the recovery of the four astronauts.
The radio environment's a teensy bit congested. Plus, satphones have their own internal batteries, independent of Artemis's powered down state.