Associazione Radioamatori Italiani
Sezione di Bra
E-ST@R Satellite
E-ST@R is a small satellite (cube-sat) completely designed and built by students of the
aerospace engineering department of Turin's Politechnic. The satellite has been realised
according to cube-sat standards, to give it the possibility to easily find a place on any
launcher. It has been then selected by ESA among the cube-sats hosted on the VEGA launcher
maiden flight.
The satellite, beside allowing verify the reliability in orbit of commercial components, will
allow verifying and in-orbit validating an active attitude control system, developed by Politechnic.
The A.R.I. Bra group, contributes to the project by developing the telemetry/telecommand board of the satellite (in practice a TNC KISS) and by providing the ground station to receive data and to command the satellite.
In this page, you can find information relevant to launch and status of the satellite, together with useful data to allow you to receive it with your home-station (and help us determining the status fo the satellite all along its orbit). In any case, you can find more information on the home-page mantained by Turin's Politechnic students.
| LAUNCH | Monday February,13 2012 - TIME 10:00 UTC (11:00 CET) |
| ORBITAL PARAMETERS (TLE) | DOWNLOAD FROM CELESTRAK.COM OBJECT 2012-006H (cat. no. 38084) |
| STATUS AND LAST HEARD REPORT | CURRENT STATUS UNKNOWN (TX OFF) LAST HEARD ON 14/02/2012 For further information see below |
| DOWNLINK | FREQUENCY :437.445 MHz MODULATION : FM + AFSK 1200bps (STANDARD PACKET AX.25) RADIATED POWER : 500mW MAX. ON DIPOLE ANTENNA |
| COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL | STANDARD PACKET AX.25 1 PACKET EVERY 2 MINUTES FROM CALLSIGN: ESTAR - TO CALLSIGN: ALLALL |
> > > LISTEN TO E-ST@R < < <
since the satellite visibility is limited in time, each satellite heard report, in particular if coming from areas
not covered by our ground-station, is really useful since it will allow us to know how the satellite behave along its
orbit.
The satellite, in nominal conditions, transmits a packet roughly every two minutes, consequently during a pass (of about
ten minutes) you can receive few packets only. Unfortunately, due to available power on-board, we could not implement a beacon
therefore to receive a signal you must listen, wait and be lucky.
THE SW TO RECEIVE TELEMETRY
If you have a station allowing us to listen to the satellite, download our SW and let us have your heard reports.
The software allows you to receive and partially decode the received packets (a TNC KISS on serial port is needed),
and to save them on a file you can send us via e-mail for further processing.
In the zip-file you can find the executable file and, for linux only, the source code in case the executable is not
compatible with your system. In the readme.txt file you can finde further useful information.
In case you need some modifications or if the software is not working correctly, please contact us!
DOWNLOAD LINUX VERSION - ver. 1.0 (11/02/2012) - 10kB
IF YOU CAN NOT USE OUR SW
You can record packets even with any ham SW which allows recording packets in BINARY FORMAT. It is important that the Sw you use does not delete data which are not in alphanumeric format. In case you need info on using any specific software contact us.
