Swiss Cube

SwissCube did catch "a cold" in the night between Friday and Saturday. Nothing to serious, but the beacon sound was a bit distorted. Messages could be still decoded by the amateur radio community, but it was a bit harder. Signal got back to normal Saturday evening. The behaviour of some components of the beacon must have changed due to the low temperature. This already happened during the thermal tests and the signal always got back to normal. Today we started the ADCS on the first (low elevation) pass and retrieved housekeeping for our three powered up subsystems (COM, EPS and ADCS). We spent the next (long) pass retrieving as much housekeeping as possible. Thank to an amateur radio in Germany (DK3WN), we are now able to recover packets that we couldn't receive properly by replaying data that he received. It's very useful as we really need practice with the ground station to operate it properly. We couldn't send any telecommand to the spacecraft during the third pass. We tried to do some tweaking of the uplink transceiver before and apparently made things worse. After that we also recalibrated the pointing of the antenna as it seemed a bit off. All the housekeeping is in the green; the spacecraft is ok but is rotating fast. The current estimation is of 37rpm (a bit more than half a rotation per second). Tomorrow(29.09.09) we'll see if the ADCS could stabilize it a bit. 25 Sept: Here is today's report on the operations. The first pass at 11h32 was too low and too short to receive anything. But we received this morning beacon data from a radio amateur in Japan telling us than the spacecraft was OK with good battery levels. We then had a great pass with a lot of data downlinked on the FSK link. We could receive the minimum and maximum values for the temperatures, voltages and current of the EPS since the start of the mission (we were really looking forward to these values). We could also get the three onboard archives (temperatures, voltages and solar cells currents) containing a full orbit worth of values. Things were working so great that we decided to turn on the ADCS for a few minutes to get its first measurements and that was also a success. On the third pass we had less success and could only downlink a few housekeeping measurements of EPS and COM and one for the ADCS. We're still having some troubles getting our telecommands up to the spacecraft. 25 Sept: Passes are expected at: * 11h32: low and short pass, beacon only; * 13h07: nice high and long pass (13 min), uplink and downlink again of HK parameters * 14h45: low elevation but long pass, will perform high data rate uplink and downlink again. 24 Sept After a first pass over Switzerland at 12h19 with a very good beacon signal (bip-bip), the team tried the "high data rate" communication link (1200 bauds, FSK) at the 13h56 pass and then 15h35 pass. The uplink had difficulty to be heard by the satellite at first, it is probably rotating fast. We are still evaluating its rotation rates. But at the second pass, the uplink went through and housekeeping data was downlinked. This housekeeping data shows that the satellite is doing great! 24 Sept The first pass of the day went very well, with a very clear beacon signal. All systems (turned-on) work great! More details

23 Sept 14:47 (Swiss time) On the second pass over Switzerland, we could decode telemetry thanks to Fribourg ground station: the batteries are fully charged (4.1 V), were around at -4o Celsius, and the power and communication systems are working fine. The solar cells are also producing between 350 mA and 500 mA. More details 23 Sept 13:20 (Swiss time) We have recognized the call sign and the thirty seconds of silence between two beacon messages. This means that the message emitted by the satellite is generated by the software and thus the satellite communication system is working great. 23 Sept 12:20 (Swiss time) The satellite has been heard from California and the Netherlands. Listen to it 23 Sept 8:51 (Swiss time) Contact with OceanSat-2 has already been established. We're now waiting for contacts with cubesats. We expect first contact with SwissCube between 13:10 and 13:22 (Swiss Time). 23 Sept 8:41 (Swiss time) SwissCube has been deployed!!!!! 23 Sept 8:30 (Swiss time) Waiting for cubesat separation in about 10 minutes. 23 Sept 8:30 (Swiss time) Vehicle performance is perfect. 23 Sept 8:24 (Swiss time) Fairing separation. Vehicle performance nominal 23 Sept 8:21 (Swiss time) Successfull take off 23 Sept 8:09 (Swiss time) Final readiness polls should now be conducted 23 Sept 8:02 (Swiss time) All the system on the launch vehicle have been powered on and everything is ready to go. 16 Sept 2009 : SwissCube has been integrated on the upper stage of the PSLV launch vehicle. All the signals are now positive for a launch on Wednesday 23 September at 8:21.