UKube-1 CubeSat Completes Mission

From AMSAT News Service:

UKube-1, the UK Space Agency’s first national spacecraft, has now completed
its nominal mission following over 14 months of operations. Discussion is
underway with AMSAT-UK about the possibility of taking over UKube-1 operations
to continue its educational and outreach activities.

Launched in July 2014, UKube-1 is a technology demonstration mission with a
broad set of objectives aimed at attracting and training future generations of
engineers, encouraging collaboration across sectors and institutions, fast
tracking space technology development and engaging with students.

As a 3 unit CubeSat (30x30x10cm), flying 4 main payloads, with all the key
subsystems of much larger satellites, UKube-1 remains one of the most advanced
CubeSats ever built. Despite some technical challenges in orbit, the mission
has achieved a range of milestones including:

• delivery into the correct planned orbit (around 650km, sun-synchronous)
• successful deployment of solar panels and antenna
• good battery health
• slow spin rate measured
• uplink and downlink capabilities checked, including Large Data Transfer,
downlink at 3 speeds, and redundant communications mode
• all core payloads commissioned and data collected for each
• on-board camera technology successfully tested
• data downlinked from multiple ground stations across the globe

UKube-1 has also helped maintain the UK’s leading position in the CubeSat
sector. Participation in the mission placed Clyde Space in an excellent
position to capitalize on the fast growing global nanosatellite market. The
company has experienced 100% year on year growth, both in turnover and
employees, as a direct result from involvement in UKube-1, and is firmly
established as a global leader.

Mark McCrum, Bright Ascension Ltd, said:
“UKube-1 provided us with an invaluable opportunity to gain flight heritage
for our software technology and to get deeply involved in the operation of a
complex CubeSat mission. It gave a huge boost to our credibility as a space
software provider and has been instrumental in winning further work.”

Craig Clark, CEO Clyde Space Ltd, said:
“UKube-1 represents a pivotal achievement in the development and growth of
Clyde Space. The project moved the company from being a spacecraft subsystems
supplier to providing full missions for our customers. To give some context to
the extent that Ukube-1 has had to our business, Clyde Space has more than
quadrupled in size in the last 3 years and there are currently over 60 CubeSats
planned through production here in Glasgow over the next 18 months. The return
on investment for Ukube-1 in terms of jobs and export sales for the UK has been
outstanding and is a great example of industry and the UK Space Agency working
together to put the UK at the forefront of global space technology.”

Professor Andrew Holland, Open University, added:
“Involvement in the UKube-1 mission, though our C3D instrument, has had a
positive effect on our research and technology program within the Space
Instrumentation Group at the Open University, as well as a positive effect on
our technology partners in the project; XCAM Ltd and e2v Ltd. The project has
helped the OU to build a new strand of instrument development within the group,
raised awareness of the CubeSat platform as a potential vehicle to accelerate
the development of scientific space instrumentation, and has provided early in-
orbit-demonstration of technologies. The mission introduced us to new academic
and industrial collaborators operating in the space sector and supported the
career development of the young engineers and scientists working on the
project.”

STFC’s RAL Space provided the Ground Station for the mission at Chilbolton
Observatory in Hampshire UK, and UKube-1 operations were commanded from there.

Mission Manager Dr Helen Walker said:
“It has been a very exciting time, made possible only with the great support
from all the teams involved.”

Although the Agency-supported mission phase has ended, discussion is underway
with AMSAT-UK about the possibility of taking over UKube-1 operations to
continue its educational and outreach activities until the satellite orbit
naturally degrades.

More information about UKube-1 can be found in the missions section of the UK
Space Agency website
https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/ukube-1

Source
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukube-1-completes-mission

UKube-1 carries a set of AMSAT-UK FUNcube boards which provide an educational
beacon for use by schools and a linear transponder for amateur radio
communications.

UKube-1 nominal frequencies:
• 145.840 MHz Telemetry downlink
• 145.915 MHz FUNcube subsystem beacon
• 400 mW inverting SSB/CW linear transponder
– 435.080-435.060 MHz Uplink
– 145.930-145.950 MHz Downlink

[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above information]

4U1UN as 4U70UN on satellite October 24-25

4u1unWord has been received, that, in celebration of the UN’s 70th
anniversary, 4U1UN will be activated as 4U70UN on Saturday 24 and Sunday
25 October. The operation by the UN ARC will be from the ground-level
garden area within the UNHQ complex in New York City and will be limited
to daylight hours. Satellite operation is included in the plans, but
time and equipment limitations will exist. Blockage from high rise
buildings toward the West is expected. Best passes will be to the East
of FN30as and North/South overhead. Possible satellites in view may be
AO-73, FO-29, AO-85, AO-7, SO-50, XW-2E and XW-2F. Note that 4U1UN is a
separate DXCC entity. See QRZ.COM for QSL info.

LAPANSAT-A2 to launch 0430UTC 28SEP15 on Indian PSLV-XL C30

amsat-id

Launch Successful and satellite has been heard!

Please send reports to [email protected]

The 76kg LAPANSAT-A2 satellite is scheduled to launch as a secondary payload of the ISRO Astrosat space telescope mission on an Indian PSLV-XL rocket at 0430UTC on 28SEP15. The satellite is expected to be deployed in a low inclination orbit of 6 to 10 degrees, at ~650km altitude. This means stations North or South of approximately 32 degrees of latitude will not be able to access the satellite, but stations near the equator (such as Indonesia) will have up to 14 passes a day.

Along with Maritime AIS monitoring equipment, and optical capabilities, LAPANSAT-A2 carries a V/U voice repeater (435.88 with PL tone up, 145.88 down) and an APRS digipeater (145.825). The telemetry beacon is 437.425 MHz. The operational plan is not known at this time.

Pre-launch Keps courtesy of Dirgan, YE0EEE:

YBSAT
1 99999U 00000    15270.20393519  .00010000  00000-0  10000-3 0 00011
2 99999 006.0383 028.8188 0001450 317.4897 243.6033 14.00000000000018

lapanA2Live launch coverage is expected on DD News beginning at 0400Z:

Doordarshan National News on YouTube

AMSAT-Indonesia has an active group on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/831872960241607/

ISRO has a Twitter account at:

https://twitter.com/isro

CAMSAT XW-2(CAS-3) satellites launch 18SEP2015 2300Z

SUCCESS! A multitude of satellites were heard on the first pass over the US!

Congratulations to CAMSAT and all parties involved!

Latest estimated keps:

http://www.amsat.org/wordpress/amsat/ftp/keps/current/nasa.all

From AMSAT-bb:

The launch postponed by one day due to technical reasons, will be at UTC
23:00:00 on 2015-09-19

Launch time: UTC 23:00:00 2015-09-19

The satellites will be separated from rocket at UTC 23:15:14 2015-09-19

73
Alan, BA1DU

 

The CAMSAT XW-2(CAS-3) cluster launch of 9 or more amateur radio satellites is CAS3Ascheduled for 23:00Z on September 18th, 2015, or late afternoon/early evening Friday night in the US. The launch is on the maiden flight of the Long March 6 vehicle, from the Taiyuan launch complex.

Satellite separation is planned for 23:15:14 UTC, and the first orbit has the cluster passing over the central US at approximately 00:05Z – 00:23Z XW-2 1st pass19SEP2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAMSAT CEO Alan Kung, BA1DU provided preliminary keplerian elements for the launch via AMSAT-BB:

XW-2
1 99999U          15261.96885740  .00004980  00000-0  28369-3 0 00000
2 99999 097.4712 269.8396 0010382 266.0521 270.6645 15.12847582000010

Frequencies may be referenced from a PDF document also provided by BA1DU. Some satellite frequencies fall outside the international amateur satellite bandplan, so please be aware of local terrestrial users:

                                                  XW-2CAS-3 Sats

See also our previous post at http://www.amsat.org/wordpress/?p=4181

Alan Biddle, WA4SCA created a series of SatPC32 Doppler.sqf file entries for the known satellites. Please be aware that the individual satellite names may differ, and additional modification of the entries may be required to work with future or the above elements.

CAS-3A,145640,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3A,145660.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3A,145675.0,435040.0,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,Transponder

CAS-3B,145705,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3B,145725.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3B,145740.0,435100.0,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,Transponder

CAS-3C,145770,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3C,145790.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3C,145805.0,435160.0,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,Transponder

CAS-3D,145835,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3D,145855.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3D,145870.0,435220.0,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,Transponder

CAS-3E,145890,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3E,145910.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3E,145925.0,435280.0,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,Transponder

CAS-3F,145955,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3F,145975.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3F,145990.0,435340.0,USB,LSB,REV,0,0,Transponder

CAS-3G,145475,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM
CAS-3G,437950,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM

CAS-3H,437200.0,0,USB,,0,CW Beacon
CAS-3H,144390.0,144390.0,FM,FM,NOR,0,0,APRS
CAS-3H,437225.0,144350.0,FM,FM,NOR,0,0,FM VOICE

CAS-3I,437000,0,FM,,,0,Digital TLM

Good luck to CAMSAT on the launch, and please send reception reports to                          [email protected] or #amsat on Twitter.