ARLA/CLUSTER: 5 CubeSats de 5 países lançados pela ISS e todos emitem em 437,375 MHz

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Five BIRDS ham radio CubeSats deployed

On Friday, July 7 five CubeSats carrying amateur radio payloads were
deployed from the Japanese module on the International Space Station

ISS astronaut Jack Fischer KG5FYH @Astro2fish tweeted:
Another great example of International Cooperation today on
@Space_Station --launched 5 micro-satellites from 5 countries off the
JAXA arm!

The BIRDS-1 constellation consists of five 1U CubeSats (BIRD-B,
BIRD-J, BIRD-G, BIRD-M and BIRD-N). They launched to the ISS on a
SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-11 on June 3, 2017. The satellites are made of the
exactly same design and use the same amateur radio frequency.

The main mission of the constellation is to do experiments on radio
communication with a CubeSat constellation via a network of UHF/VHF
amateur radio ground stations all over the world.

The challenge is to distinguish each satellite from the others sharing
the same transmit frequency, hand over operation of a satellite from
one ground station to another and assemble the satellite data, such as
housekeeping telemetry, music and the Earth images, obtained at
different ground stations.

Amateur radio enthusiasts are asked to join the network to assist in
the data downlink and reconstruction of the patchy satellite data into
one meaningful data. Orbit information and operational plan of each
satellite will be made available to the amateur radio community in the
world. Software to decode the satellite data will be also made
available.

The IARU reports the satellites have CW, 1k2 AFSK FM, audio FM and 9k6
GMSK downlinks on a coordinated downlink frequency of 437.375 MHz.

A QSL is issued for a reception report. Please check the BIRDS web site.
http://birds.ele.kyutech.ac.jp/amateur.html

The BBC has a story about one of the satellites GhanaSat-1 (BIRDS-G, ANUSAT-1)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40538471

BIRDS-1 CubeSat Constellation
https://amsat-uk.org/2017/07/01/birds-1-cubesat-constellation-deployment/
https://amsat-uk.org/2016/08/11/ham-radio-birds-constellation/