Bulgarian Amateur Radio Cubesat to Launch 2018
/The Bulgarian Federation of Radio Amateurs (BFRA) are collaborating with the Space Challenges program and EnduroSat for the first Bulgarian Amateur Radio CubeSat mission named EnduroSat One
The project will include launching of 1U CubeSat from ISS (International Space Station) with goals to foster Amateur Radio’s participation in space research and communication in Bulgaria, to teach the participants in Space Challenges Program and hundreds of students from diverse Bulgarian universities (Sofia University, Technical University - Sofia, Tech university - Plovdiv and others) in practical satellite communication and to promote amateur radio hobby to young people henceforth to enrich the Radio Amateur community in Bulgaria.
The satellite will have two beacons:
- CW (A1A) beacon which will transmit its own call sign and some TLM data using Morse code
- telemetry beacon using AX.25 in datagram-mode
Radio amateurs all around the globe will be able to listen to the satellite beacons, to receive and decode telemetry data from the satellite on a regular basis. Every radio amateur will be able to connect to the satellite and receive more detailed telemetry information and get a confirmation from the satellite for every established contact which will serve as QSL card.
A competition will be held, a log file with all the successful communications will be published and the call sign with the most uploaded telemetry data will be announced by the satellite through its beacon. BFRA will guide the students to experience their first space mission by connecting with the CubeSat once in orbit. They will learn satellite communication by practicing. During the mission, Space Challenges team will record educational video materials and will publish them online in English and Bulgarian, demonstrating satellite communication techniques and increasing the popularity of the Radio amateur society in the region. This will be made possible by Spaceport online educational platform.
Spaceport is an online platform for space education and the developed materials during EnduroSat One mission will guarantee maximum project exposure to young people. Since, this is the first ever Bulgarian radio amateur CubeSat mission, it will undoubtedly create good practices in correct registration and launch preparation processes for future educational and radio-amateur CubeSat programs on local (Bulgarian) level.
Those good practices will be shared also on the educational platform of Space Challenges and provided to interested students and radio-amateurs, with permission from the given organizations (including IARU).
EnduroSat One will be embarked on the cargo resupply mission SpaceX CRS-14 to the International Space Station manifested to be launched during February 2018 from Cape Canaveral SLC-40 launch base in Florida, USA. Proposing a UHF 9k6 GFSK AX25 downlink.
More info on the Space Challenges web portal - https://www.spaceedu.net/
Spaceport - https://spaceport.academy/
