New information on the identity of BRICSat, NO-83 has been been received
from Nico Janssen, PA0DLO.
Nico (with the help of Jan, PEOSAT) came up with an ingenious way of making
the tight-lipped BRICSat tell us which object it really is. See excerpt from
Nico's email to me below.
>From Nico Janssen, PA0DLO -
>> To be able to receive downlink signals from BRICSat, I asked
>> Jan, PE0SAT, to assist by transmitting PSK31 signals to this
>> satellite on the 10 m uplink, hoping the downlink would switch
>> on. And this worked. But since the power system in this satellite
>> is very weak, there is not enough power available for longer
>> transmissions. So when an uplink signal is received, the downlink
>> transmitter switches on but then switches off after a fraction of
>> a second. The only thing you see in the downlink is a very short
>> blip. And this repeats with every PSK31 transmission in the uplink.
>> Interestingly, these tests only worked during passes of ULTRASat 2,
>> not ULTRASat 3 or any other ULTRASat... So now we have to conclude
>> that BRICSat, NO 83, is actually object 90721, ULTRASat 2.
Therefore, the AMSAT distribution will begin using the ULTRASAT-2 TLEs for
BRICSat, NO-83.
Thanks to Nico, PA0DLO and Jan, PEOSAT for a really great bit of detective
work.