The BIRDS-2 Team will send QSL cards to the amateurs who successfully receive CW beacon signals or APRS beacon signals or Digipeat a packet or all. So all the amateurs who succeed in doing any or all of the above can send in their details along with the data to the BIRDS-2 team through this link. The front page of the QSL card for each of the satellite is shown below: Continue reading “Unveiling QSL Card of BIRDS-2 CubeSats”
BIRDS-2 APRS Digipeater Alive
The VHF transceiver of BIRDS-2 CubeSats, meant for Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) Digipeater is alive now. The ground station in KyuTech confirmed reception of beacon from the satellites and also some amateurs have been able to decode the beacon. All interested amateurs are welcome to send their packets for digipeating. And also, the confirmation of the digipeat or the beacon from the radio to the team from here.
Updated TLE for BIRDS-2 CubeSats
The TLE for respective BIRDS-2 CubeSats has been identified. Mike Rupprecht, DK3WN had already announced his results of the tracking on his blog. Now NORAD confirmed it the result. The latest TLE is as follows:
UITMSAT-1 1 43589U 98067PD 18228.77659872 .00010086 00000-0 15653-3 0 9999 2 43589 51.6396 76.7211 0006849 92.4995 267.6780 15.54622014 1052 MAYA-1 1 43590U 98067PE 18228.77648787 .00010199 00000-0 15804-3 0 9997 2 43590 51.6396 76.7203 0006951 93.3359 266.8427 15.54649489 988 BHUTAN-1 1 43591U 98067PF 18229.41912344 .00010390 00000-0 16055-3 0 9995 2 43591 51.6398 73.5124 0007028 96.8197 263.3593 15.54701179 1085
ISS Deployment Look Back
TLE for BIRDS-2 CubeSats
NORAD has added TLE for the 3 new objects flying close to ISS which we believe is for the 3 CubeSats of BIRDS-2 project. Although, we cannot say which TLE corresponds to which satellites since all three are moving close to each other. The TLE’s are as follows:
1998-067PD 1 43589U 98067PD 18223.11964464 -.00000488 00000-0 00000-0 0 9991 2 43589 51.6427 104.9423 0007687 77.9460 282.2615 15.54522043 186 1998-067PE 1 43590U 98067PE 18223.44105420 -.00000488 00000-0 00000-0 0 9998 2 43590 51.6428 103.3419 0008158 77.0546 283.1355 15.54548150 152 1998-067PF 1 43591U 98067PF 18223.37674343 -.00000489 00000-0 00000-0 0 9997 2 43591 51.6489 103.6572 0008531 76.1505 283.9569 15.54509646 144
Updated TLE can also be found here. We will update the TLE on our Amateur Radio page.
About APRS-DP Mission of BIRDS-2 CubeSats
There has been some inquiries about the APRS Digipeater that is on-board all the CubeSats of BIRDS-2 Project deployed yesterday from the ISS. At this moment the team would like to clarify that the APRS transceiver is one of the technology demonstration payload and it is initially Turned OFF. These transceivers will be Turned ON later after the initial operation of the CubeSats whereby the team will confirm that all systems of the satellite is performing well. The schedule of operations of APRS mission and details about the APRS-DP will be posted on this website soon. Apologies for the inconvenience. Kindly bear with us a little longer. The team is looking forward to starting the mission soon.
BIRDS-2 CubeSats in Orbit
The 3 CubeSats of BIRDS-2 Project, BHUTAN-1, MAYA-1 and UiTMSat-1 was released into orbit yesterday (August 10, 2018) from the JAXA’s Kibo Module of ISS. Astronaut Alexander Gerst has share some wonderful images of the deployment captured from the ISS on his twitter account (click here to view).
Soon after the deployment, the first beacon signals from all 3 satellites were heard at the Ground Station in Mongolia which is a part of BIRDS GSN. Soon after, the Team also received beacon signals at the KyuTech Ground station. Following that many amateur users including other ground stations of the BIRDS GSN have reported reception of beacon signals. As of now the satellites seems to be in good health and the team are now going ahead with the initial operation plan. Stay tuned for more updates.
Interested in Receiving Beacon Signals from BIRDS-2 CubeSats?
The BIRDS-2 CubeSats, BHUTAN-1, MAYA-1 and UiTMSat-1 are bound to be released from the ISS on Aug 10, 2018. All three CubeSats carry same UHF transceiver which is designed to transmit CW Beacon Signal @ 437.375 MHz. All interested amateur users are welcome to help us in receiving the beacon signals from the satellites once they are released from ISS. The information related to receiving the beacon signal is available here.
Once you have the data, you can submit to us from here. Or simply follow this link. We look forward to hearing from you.
Live Broadcast of the Deployment
BIRDS-2 Deployment Date and First Signal Acquisition Plan for BIRDS GSN
We have a date. The three CubeSats of BIRDS-2 project are scheduled to be released from the JAXA Kibo Module of ISS on August 10, 2018, 18:45 JST (UTC+9). Based on our initial calculations, the satellites are expected to be flying above Mongolia when it starts the transmission of CW Beacon signals after 30 minutes mandatory no RF period upon release from ISS.
ISS Release | Time (UTC+9) |
Antenna Deploy | @ 30 mins | CW Beacon Starts |
August 10 | 18:45 | 19:15 | Satellite location is approaching Mongolia | 19:17 |
Continue reading “BIRDS-2 Deployment Date and First Signal Acquisition Plan for BIRDS GSN”