Image taken morning of 25 July 2014, showing southern Africa with cold front. Maputo Bay is visible on right.
Southern Africa and Maputo Bay.
Image – 25 July 2014
Author Archives: Leon
ISILaunch07 CubeSat Launch support
On the 19th of June 2014, ISILaunch’s ISILaunch07 mission lifted-off aboard a DNEPR launch vehicle from Yasny, Russia. The ISILaunch part of launch consisted of 22 spacecraft. The mission made use of ISIS’s QuadPack dispensers and iMDC sequencer deployment system. Shortly after launch and separation it was confirmed that all deployer doors had opened.
The F’SATI ground station would be one of the first stations that the group of satellites would pass over and was ready to listen for signals from some of the released satellites. The primary targets for the first pass was the QB50p1 and QB50p2 satellites, both spacecraft would effectively switch on and start transmitting over South Africa. A complete CW message from each satellite was decoded and sent to the team at ISIS in Delft (NL) who decoded and confirmed that both satellites were healthy. The two messages can be seen below:
QP1RBAEIIZC06
QP2QBAEHHZC09
On the second pass just over and hour later 46 frames were received and decoded from UNISAT-6 and emailed to the satellite operator.
ISILaunch07 participants:
BugSat-1
DTUsat-2
DUCHIFAT
Flock1c
NanosatC-BR1
PACE
Perseus-M1 & Perseus-M2
PolyITAN-1
POPSAT-HIP1
QB50p1 & QB50p2
More information: http://blog.isilaunch.com/
ZACUBE-1 Close Approach Notification – 29 June 2014
Over the weekend ZACUBE-1 (TshepisoSat) had close approach with another space object. In this case it was a piece of Fengyun 1C debris. The debris was created by a Chinese anti-satellite missile test that was conducted on January 11, 2007.
The satellite is still in good shape after the predicted conjunction.
————————————————————————————————————
Sent: 27 June 2014 06:17 PM
To: Space Science Information
Cc: JSpOC/Space Correspondence
Subject: ZACUBE Close Approach Notification
Sir/Ma’am,
The United States Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) has identified a
predicted conjunction between ZACUBE (SCC# 39417) and SCC# 30189.
Primary Object: ZACUBE (SCC# 39417)
Secondary Object: SCC# 30189
Time of Closest Approach: 29 JUN 2014 04:55 UTC
Overall miss distance: 334 meters
Radial (dU) miss distance: -7 meters
In-Track (dV) miss distance: 249 meters
Cross-track (dW) miss distance: 223 meters
Primary Radial Error (U): 8 meters
Primary In-Track Error (V): 164 meters
Primary Cross-track Error (W): 6 meters
Secondary Radial Error (U): 34 meters
Secondary In-Track Error (V): 3877 meters
Secondary Cross-Track Error (W): 28 meters
It is possible to provide another estimate using owner/operator ephemeris
data. If the satellite operator is interested please have them reply to all
addresses listed in the Cc line. Email is the preferred method of
communication.
Thank you for your time and assistance. Please contact us if there are any
questions.
Very Respectfully,
JSpOC Orbital Protection Team
Joint Space Operations Center
Vandenberg Air Force Base, California USA
SA AMSAT Space Symposium 2014
We were invited to give a mission update at the SA AMSAT‘s Space Symposium on Saturday (24 May 2014) at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria. The event was well attended and even had representatives from SANSA in attendance. Presentations on other CubeSats included Denel Dynamics’ DynaCube, FUNcube-1 and SA AMSAT’s own KLETSkous project.
The paper presented is available below with permission from the organisers.
TshepisoSAT, six months on orbit
Update time! No mumbo jumbo, just pictures.
The two pictures below seemed nice enough to write a post about, so here goes.
Although pictures of the sun are nice, the earth makes a much better subject. So far we have only been lucky enough to snap shots of either the blackness of space, the sun or full frame shots of the earth’s surface. So it is with great pleasure that I present to you the two images below. These are our first two in which you can clearly see the curved horizon of the earth!
The earth with horizon, showing the south east coast of South Africa.
The earth with much wider horizon, possibly the west coast of Africa.