First and foremost! Fox-1A (now officially re-named AO-85) was successfully launched from Vandenburg AFB, California on an Atlas V vehicle this morning (10-8-2015) at 12:49:30 UTC. Congratulations to the AO-85 team and all involved for a long effort, but a great result. AMSAT-BB is alive with reception reports.
REMEMBER - AO-85 is now being commissioned, so please do not attempt to uplink until the commissioning process is complete.
The following are pre-launch TLEs that will be in the AMSAT distribution this week:
AO-85 1 99992U 15281.53437500 .00015007 00000-0 15580-2 0 00009 2 99992 064.7657 291.6734 0216442 282.3705 182.7702 14.73904028000019
On a sadder note (for me anyway). I made a copy error last week and some of the XW-2_ satellites ended up with "M" instead of "W". ("M" looks like "W" if you get to far back from the screen!) Copy-paste has always been one of my areas that need improvement. Anyway, I have corrected all that this week and the correct info on the XW-2_ satellites is as follows: NUDT-PHONESAT - NORAD CAT ID 40900 (Object B) XW-2A - NORAD CAT ID 40903 (Object E) XW-2C - NORAD CAT ID 40906 (Object H) XW-2D - NORAD CAT ID 40907 (Object J) LILACSAT-2 - NORAD CAT ID 40908 (Object K) XW-2E - NORAD CAT ID 40909 (Object L) XW-2F - NORAD CAT ID 40910 (Object M) XW-2B - NORAD CAT ID 40911 (Object N) DCBB - NORAD CAT ID 40912 (Object P)
LQSat was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (located in inner Mongolia) with a Chang Zheng (CZ-2D) rocket on 10-07-2015 at 04:13 UTC. LQSat is part of a flock of objects and is yet to be identified. This week's distribution includes a list of candidates is as follows: OB A CZ-2D (Object A) - NORAD CAT ID 40958 OB B CZ-2D (Object B) - NORAD CAT ID 40959 OB C CZ-2D (Object C) - NORAD CAT ID 40960 OB D CZ-2D (Object D) - NORAD CAT ID 40961
Finally, two Danish satellites carrying amateur radio payloads were successfully deployed from the ISS on Monday 10-5-2015 at 14:05 UTC. These satellites are AAUSat-5 and GomX-3. As yet I have no source for the TLEs and they are not currently listed on Spacetrack. I know they are active because of AMSAT-BB chatter. If anyone has a source of fresh TLEs (probably one set will work for now), please send me a link or send me the TLEs!
Mineo Wakita, JE9PEL reports on AMSAT-BB 10-5-2015: Downlink CW Mode AAUSat-5 437.425 437.425 9600bps GMSK,CW GomX-3 437.250 . 9600bps GMSK
I, JE9PEL heard now GomX-3 signal. 00:05-00:15 JST, 6 Oct 2015, 15:05-15:15 UTC, 5 Oct 2015 Ele 19 WN-N-E, 437.250MHz 9600bps GMSK CSP