Hello AMSAT-BB readers,
in few hours, ESA launcher rocket Vega will send to space several satellites, ESTCube-2 among them. ESTCube-2 is a three-unit cubesat built by students of Estonian universities with international partners, coordinator of the project is been Tartu Observatory of Tartu University. The satellite is a successor of ESTCube-1 satellite and has similar primary mission - to test electric solar sail technology in the space. This time, main focus is devoted to using a charged tether to act as a plasma brake, to bring satellite back to the atmosphere much faster than it would happen naturally.
ESTCube-2 has also few payloads for amateur radio community. It has functionality as an AX.25 digipeater, from time to time sending audio greetings to all of the listeners (main auditorium: schoolkids), measuring RF noise in orbit and taking images of Earth and sending full-size image data over 2.4 GHz radio. However, most of HAM-related payloads are to be expected to work not before commissioning period. Till that, satellite is sending periodically housekeeping telemetry data about it's subsystems with interval of one minute. Few days after the launch, transmission period will be set a bit longer. Over the Europe it is also possible to receive more regular responses for telecommands.
That satellite will separate from launcher at 01:36:25Z on October 7, 2023 and after waiting for 45 minutes, should start sending it's beacon data. RF transmissions will occur on the frequency of 435800 kHz +- Doppler shift, transmitted signal has 9600 bps GFSK (G3RUH) modulation to send AX.25 UI packets.
A bit more data together with description of housekeeping beacon data formats and preliminary (as of October 6, 2023) TLE-s can be found at: https://www.estcube.eu/blogi/Raadio
There will be a small award for first radio amateur receiving ESTCube-2 data and sending it to us to address (please add your callsign/name and coordinates/WWL, too): [email protected].
With best wishes, Tõnis Eenmäe, ES5TF