Thailand’s KNACKSAT-2 CubeSat Preparing for Deployment from the ISS

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Thailand’s KNACKSAT-2 CubeSat Preparing for Deployment from the ISS

Thailand’s KNACKSAT-2 satellite is preparing for deployment from the International Space Station, with release currently scheduled for 3rd February 2026, at 08:55 UTC (03:55 AM EST). The mission continues Thailand’s university-led CubeSat development program following the earlier KNACKSAT-1 mission. The project is led by King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok in Thailand, working with domestic and international partners to advance satellite engineering, payload integration, and on-orbit operations.

KNACKSAT-2 was transported to the International Space Station in late 2025 and is a 3U CubeSat designed to host multiple payloads. The satellite expands on KNACKSAT-1, which demonstrated Thailand’s ability to design and build a satellite domestically. Development and testing were conducted in cooperation with NBSPACE and other academic and research partners. The mission is intended to help Thailand develop multi-payload CubeSat platforms and prepare for future ride-share launch opportunities.

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Starlink is Lowering Thousands of Satellites' Orbits to Reduce the Risk of Collisions

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Starlink is Lowering Thousands of Satellites' Orbits to Reduce the Risk of Collisions

Satellites orbiting at around 342 miles will be dropped down to about 298 miles, Starlink's VP of engineering says.

Starlink will lower the orbits of roughly 4,400 satellites this year as a safety measure, according to engineering VP Michael Nicolls. In a post on X, Nicolls wrote that the company is "beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation," in which all satellites orbiting at around 550 kilometres (342 miles) will be lowered to around 480 km (298 miles). The move is intended to reduce the risk of collisions, putting the satellites in a region that's less cluttered and will allow them to deorbit more quickly should an incident occur.

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New Satellite Tracking Application Released

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Bob McGwier, N4HY, has announced the release of a new satellite tracking application entitled Visible Ephemeris.

Visible Ephemeris is a modern, spiritual successor to Quiktrak (1986), re-engineered for the Raspberry Pi 5 and modern silicon. It is capable of propagating 13,000+ satellites in real-time with sub-second updates while maintaining <5% CPU utilisation. Visible Ephemeris is high performance physics-based program using Kelso/Villado SGP4 to track satellites (all in the Celestrak TLE). It uses McGwier’s implementation of Pedro Escobal AOS/LOS search, but rewritten for altitude and not Eccentric Anomaly. The code is designed for and intended for the Raspberry Pi and displays graphics components using Web UI.

It features a Hybrid Decoupled Architecture where the UI, Orbital Mechanics, and Network Services run on independent threads, ensuring the interface never freezes—even during heavy calculation loads.

Visible Ephemeris has been released under the MIT license and further details can be found at https://github.com/n4hy/VisibleEphemerisCPP.git