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.
DEORBITSAIL (NORAD ID #40419) has been added to the AMSAT KEP distribution
this week.
The TLEs associated with NO-83 (BRICSAT, NORAD ID #40655) have been changed
to match the TLEs (Ultrasat-3) used by the BRICSat team. Since BRICSat
transmits infrequently, it has been difficult to identify which object is in
fact BRICSat.
(Thanks to the BRICSat team, Nic Janssen (PA0DLO), and others who have been
working on the identification of BRICSat.)
