Imagine a small satellite equipped with a reliable realtime clock. Imagine also that it has the means of  being uploaded with its own keplerian elements. Based on these, it could use Plan13 to change its mode based the location of the earth over which it is at any time. How much power would such a technique consume? Watch the video below and find out:


In this application, the chip's EEPROM is loaded with the keplerian elements and with a series of lat/long points that represent rectangluar areas on the earth's surface. When the object defined by the elements has a surface Lat/Long within one of the rectangles, it raises pin 13 high. (On most Arduinos, pin 13 is connected to an LED).

You are to imagine that on board the satellite, the high pin represents a change in mode. Most simply, the pin drives a switch whereby a satellite turns its beacon off when within these zones. Since a satellite in polar orbit spends a considerable amount of its time over unpopulated areas (the poles), this application could allow the satellite to  use its batteries much more efficiently. This would be especially true for satellites with linear transponders on board, since they are only of use over populated areas.