LOHAN is a madcap project involving using a high-altitude balloon to launch a glider to the edge of space then have it released from the balloon and navigate itself down to a designated landing spot. The unit needed a way to communicate when out of normal GPRS coverage.
In addition, the authorities required an emergency balloon cut-down in the event that LOHAN wandered off course.
Therefore, as well as transmitting GPS data when the unit was out of range of standard mobile networks, the RockBLOCK was also used to receive commands from the ground. If they wished to abort the mission, a message would have been sent to the RockBLOCK using our API, which would then be received on-board the spacecraft, and have activated the self-destruct mechanism.