ARLA/CLUSTER: Lançamento bem sucedido dos Nano Satelites Sul Africanos

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Launch success for SA nano satellite

On Thursday 21 November 2013 the French South African Institute of
Technology (F'SATI), at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology,
made history by being the first in South Africa, and indeed the first
in Africa, to launch a locally built nano satellite into orbit from a
site in Russia.

Deon Coetzee, ZR1DE, who represented SA AMSAT at a ceremony held in
the auditorium at the university campus reports that Vice Chancellor,
Prof. Vuyisa Mazwi-Tonga, paid tribute to all at the university who
made this achievement possible, and said she was immensely proud of
being part of it all.

Original known as ZACube-1, the satellite has been named TshepisoSat,
after a competition held for Grade 9 learners. Tshepiso is the seSotho
word meaning promise.

The launch was the culmination of five years' work after the first
proposal to build a small satellite as part of the engineering
curriculum was put forward by Professor Robert van Zyl in February
2008. Co-operation of the French Government made possible the forming
of F'SATI and the French Ambassador in South Africa, Elizabeth
Barbier, during a video address, promised continued support by France
for the programme.

ZACUBE-1 was one of fourteen cubesats aboard the thirty metre tall,
three stage rocket. All the cubesats were successfully released at a
height of 600 km above the Earth. TshepisoSat will circle the Earth up
to fifteen times per day in a polar orbit.

"At 11h13 the first signals from ZACUBE-1 were received amongst loud
cheers", Deon said. According to Francois Visser, ZS1CED, who was the
principal engineer and student mentor, the satellite was functioning
well. The satellite also includes a small camera which will be used to
monitor the releases of the 20 metre beacon antenna. The beacon will
operate on 14 099 kHz and will be used to characterise the Superdarn
antennas at the Antarctic which are used to study the ionosphere. A
UHF beacon operates on 437,345 MHz.
Follow progress at www.cput.ac.za/fsati and www.amsatsa.org.za

The second of the 14 CubeSats of interest to radio amateurs is
FunCube. The satellite is an AMSAT-UK project built in conjunction
with ISIS. The first signals from FunCube were received by Alan Soal,
ZS1LS, about 10 minutes after separation, telemetry was successfully
decoded, and uploaded to the FunCube data warehouse. All main
parameters on FUNcube look nominal; temp, battery voltage, and solar
panel charging rate.

FunCube carries several interesting payloads and has already been
given an OSCAR designation, Oscar-73.
Follow FunCube on www.funcube.org.uk.

The South African Radio League