BELOW IS THE ANSWER TO THE MISSION TIME PUZZLE. IF YOU DON'T WANT THE ANSWER YET, STOP READING NOW!

Here is the dialogue that occured which brought this anomaly to light:
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E-mail from Barry Kort on Feb 13th, 2006:
Using several of your published reports, I've worked out a simple math formula for estimating Mission Time from UTC.

Let's say you record SuitSat-1 at HH:MM UTC on Feb DD. Then the Mission Time should be ...

Approximate Mission Time = 1440xDD + 60xHH + MM - 5752 (plus or minus 8 minutes)

That last number in the formula is the estimated start time of the mission clock, in minutes after midnight Jan 30. I obtained it by averaging several reports where both the mission time and UTC time were reported.
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E-mail from Barry Kort on Feb 14th, 2006 (addressed to Richard, N2SPI):
Hi Richard,

In order to get your Mission Time to match the estimate from the UTC, I found I had to fudge the formula as follows:
Revised Formula for Estimated Mission Time = 1433*DD + 60*HH + MM - 5686

The odd thing is that the mission clock on SuitSat-1 seems to be losing 7 minutes a day! If it were running at the correct rate, that first coefficient should have been 1440 (the number of minutes in a 24-hour day).
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After receiving the above e-mail, I sent the following to Steve Bible, N7HPR. Steve designed and built the controller for SuitSat.
Hey Steve,

What do you make of this?
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Steve's reply:
He is correct. I noticed this this weekend but left it up for others to discover. By my estimates, the clock is losing approximately 8 minutes per day. I am not sure why. I tested the clock before shipping it. So I need to go back and look again to find out why.
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E-mail from Barry Kort to Richard, N2SPI on Feb 15th, 2006
Hi Richard,

Looks like AJ has set up a nice puzzler, thanks to your precision compilation of telemetry data on AJ's blog.

Here is a minor revision to the formula, accurate to within half a minute...
SuitSat-1 Mission Time at HH:MM:SS on Feb DD = Int(1432.4*DD + 59.7*HH + MM + SS/60 - 5677.5)

The epoch offset constant, 5677.5, corresponds to mission start time of 22:37:30 UTC Feb 3.

The lead coefficient, 1432.4, indicates the mission clock is losing 7.6 minutes per 24-hour day.

Let's hope the students enjoy working out this intriguing timekeeping puzzle!

Regards,

Barry Kort

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