Tag Archives: Analyse

Nanosail-D Sails Home – Mission Complete

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Nanosail over LeidenAfter spending more than 240 days “sailing” around the Earth, NASA’s NanoSail-D a nanosatellite that deployed NASA’s first-ever solar sail in low-Earth orbit has successfully completed its Earth orbiting mission. Launched to space Nov. 19, 2010 as a payload on NASA’s FASTSAT, a small satellite, NanoSail-D’s sail deployed on Jan. 20. The research team continues to analyze the orbital data to determine how future satellites can use this new technology.A main objective of the NanoSail-D mission was to demonstrate and test the deorbiting capabilities of a large low mass high surface area sail. “The NanoSail-D mission produced a wealth of data that will be useful in understanding how these types of passive deorbit devices react to the upper atmosphere,” said Joe Casas, FASTSAT project scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Source: Nasa Nanosail
Website: NanoSail

AO-51 IHU Crash

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Satellite IHUAMSAT-NA VP Operations Drew Glasbrenner KO4MA reports on Friday’s IHU crash on the Amateur Radio satellite AO-51. Sometime between 1815 and 1945Z November 25, AO-51′s IHU crashed. This happened after a few days of intermittent and unpredictable operation.

Mark N8MH and I reset the satellite and started the repeater back up around ~2030Z, and lowered the output power to about 300 milliwatts. Battery voltage was low, around 4.9v, with cell 1 less than 1 volt. This is very troublesome, as the impending third cell failure will likely end our continuing operations, particularly if it fails shorted as the others have. We’ve also observed the transmitters cutting off around 4.7 to 4.6 volts prior to the last reset, in eclipse.

We’ll do what we can, but her days are short. Let me ask once again for more reports, especially from the US operators, to the Live Satellite Status webpage. The command stations monitor this for changes in the operation of AO-51, and while worldwide participation is good, few US operators post to it.

Update Nov 27, 2011:

AO-51 still off-air. Satellite is not responding to commands, we suspect that the 3rd cell has failed short, therefor insufficient voltage for the transmitter.

Elana-III Cubesat TLE Lottery

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TLE LotteryThe search for the right TLE information has begun. After a launch, it’s always figuring out which objects in celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/tle-new.txt correspond to which satellite.

The first initial reports are available. Keep in mind when using these data, they will quickly change until the object information is linked to the correct satellite.

We suspect OBJECT B to be ?
We suspect OBJECT C to be ?
We suspect OBJECT D to be ?

We suspect OBJECT E to be RAX-2

We suspect OBJECT F to be DICE
We suspect OBJECT G to be E1P

Space Track 02-11-2011 17:29 UTC

OBJECT B
1 37850U 11061B   11305.51394459 +.00000487 +00000-0 +51357-4 0 00087
2 37850 101.7040 237.2054 0255998 281.2563 075.9820 14.77492974000595
OBJECT C
1 37851U 11061C   11306.52970872  .00006612  00000-0  54567-3 0    79
2 37851 101.7029 238.6826 0255867 278.7162 078.5097 14.77513975   743
OBJECT D
1 37852U 11061D   11306.52971894  .00011164  00000-0  91731-3 0    66
2 37852 101.6977 238.6724 0254624 278.8801 078.3646 14.77522609   745
OBJECT E
1 37853U 11061E   11305.92013487  .00009089  00000-0  74764-3 0    65
2 37853 101.6959 237.7989 0254900 280.7163 076.5435 14.77552774   651
OBJECT F
1 37854U 11061F   11306.52898599  .00014110  00000-0  11481-2 0    87
2 37854 101.6996 238.6806 0254637 278.7716 078.4718 14.77753179   735
OBJECT G
1 37855U 11061G   11305.51340081 -.00000195  00000-0 -36404-5 0    67
2 37855 101.6989 237.2087 0256557 281.4195 075.8285 14.77694693   587

Prospero Audio Files

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Prospero audio files recorded on 20, 21 and 24 october 2011. During the recordings I switch sometime from RHCP to LHCP, AM to FW, USB and LSB but most of the recording are in AM modulation.

Prospero-20-10-2011-1854CEST.wav 11,3 MB (No longer available)
Prospero-21-10-2011-1906CEST.wav 92,3 MB (No longer available)
Prospero-24-10-2011-1755CEST.wav 24,1 MB (No longer available)

Maybe someone can perform some further analyses to see if there are other signals then the ones from the ORBCOMM satellites.