Chinese CAS-7B Satellite Carrying an FM Transponder

CAMSAT CEO Alan Kung, BA1DU, reports that CAS-7B (BP-1B) is expected to launch on July 22 at 0500 UTC, on the Hyperbola 1 vehicle. CAS-7B is a spherical spacecraft, 500 millimeters (approximately 19.7 inches) in diameter with a mass of 3 kilograms (about 6.6 pounds). The CW telemetry beacon will be on 435.715 MHz. The V/U FM 16 kHz wide transponder downlink is 435.690 MHz, and the uplink is 145.900 MHz. The launch from Jiuquan will be into a 300-kilometer (approximately 186-mile), 42.7° inclination orbit.

LightSail 2 CubeSat to Transmit Morse

The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 CubeSat, launched on the 25 June 2019, will transmit Morse code from space.

LightSail is a citizen-funded project and the satellite is due to be deployed on the 2 July 2019.

Once deployed, LightSail 2 will automatically transmit a beacon packet every few seconds, which can be decoded into 238 lines of text telemetry describing the spacecraft’s health and status, including everything from battery status to solar sail deployment motor state.

Every 45 seconds, the spacecraft will transmit ‘LS2’ on the spacecraft’s frequency of 437.025MHz.

More Information - http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar-sailing/

Amateur Ham Radio Satellites to Deploy from ISS

Three BIRDS-3 satellites with amateur radio payloads will be deployed from the International Space Station during the morning of 17th June 2019

The BIRDS-3 1U CubeSat satellites are NepaliSat-1 (Nepal), Raavana-1 (Sri Lanka) and Uguisu (Japan).

The three satellites operate on the same frequency - 437.375 MHz CW beacon and 4800bps GMSK

Watch the live streaming of the deployment starting at 0835 GMT 17th June 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrw3cMw10nQ

BIRDS-3 Project site - https://birds3.birds-project.com/