Houston, we have a new Prentiss relay

This is NASA putting the latest Prentiss RC-52/A into geostationary orbit. I love the new RC series: better flutter mitigation; smoother interput and of course the blue-shift is basically nonexistent. And they're putting 52/A at 44°40'38.4"W (here), providing some solid backup coverage of the Atlantic pseudotracks (and also for Brazil; it's a few minutes from sharing a longitude with Sao Paolo.

As far as I know, this Prentiss will be online as of this evening; especially with GEO orbits, they tend to plug-n-play these after dropping them where they want to be anyway. Thinking the way to hit 52/A until anyone comes up with something more clever is to hit the Fairchild in Venezuela (can't recall the ident; if you can, feel free to put in the comments). (That's a nightsky routelist obviously.)

Pumped.