ARLA/CLUSTER: Satelite LightSail 2 , beacon vai transmitir em CW

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

LightSail 2 launches, will transmit CW beacon

The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 CubeSat, launched on June 25, will
transmit Morse code from space.

LightSail is a citizen-funded project to send a small spacecraft,
propelled solely by sunlight, into Earth's orbit. The innovative
satellite is due to be deployed on July 2 from Prox-1, a Georgia Tech
student-built spacecraft the size of a small washing machine.

Once deployed, LightSail 2 will automatically transmit a beacon packet
every few seconds, which can be decoded into 238 lines of text
telemetry describing the spacecraft's health and status, including
everything from battery status to solar sail deployment motor state.
Every 45 seconds, the spacecraft will transmit "LS2" on the
spacecraft's frequency of 437.025 MHz, within the Amateur Radio
70-centimeter band.

Further details can be found online at,
http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar-sailing/ .

LightSail 2 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, carried by
the SpaceX triple-booster Falcon Heavy rocket. The launcher also
carried aloft two dozen spacecraft for the US Air Force STP-2 mission.
Launch had been set to occur late on June 24, but SpaceX delayed the
liftoff to make additional ground system checks.

"During its ride to orbit, LightSail 2 was tucked safely inside its
Prox-1 carrier spacecraft," The Planetary Society said post-launch.

"The Falcon Heavy upper stage's payload stack released Prox-1 about an
hour and 20 minutes after liftoff, at an altitude of roughly 720
kilometers (446 miles). Prox-1 will house LightSail 2 for one week,
allowing time for other vehicles released into the same orbit to drift
apart so each can be identified individually."

Bruce Betts, Planetary Society chief scientist and LightSail 2 program
manager, said, "After years of hard work, we are ecstatic with the
launch and looking forward to doing some solar sailing."

Some 500 Planetary Society members and supporters were on hand at the
Kennedy Space Center Apollo-Saturn V Center to watch their crowdfunded
spacecraft take flight.

LightSail 2 team members will soon converge at Cal Poly San Luis
Obispo in California, where the spacecraft's mission control is
located. Once LightSail 2 is released from Prox-1, the team will spend
several days checking out its systems before commanding its dual-sided
solar panels to deploy. Following that, the spacecraft's solar sails
will be deployed in approximately 2 weeks.

Two US Naval Academy student-built satellites carrying Amateur Radio
payloads were on the launch. BRICSat-2 (call sign USNAP1) will
function as a 1.2/9.6 k APRS digipeater on 145.825 MHz. Telemetry will
be transmitted on 437.975 MHz. PSAT-2 also will operate on

145.825 MHz with APRS to voice and DTMF to voice/APRS, and it will
carry a 28.120 MHz up/435.350 MHz down PSK31 transponder. An SSTV
camera will transmit on the same downlink.

Fonte: The American Radio Relay League