[W6YRA] SMAP launch with cubesats next Thursday

[Ryan Caron]

ELFINs and Bruin Amateur Radio Club members,

A Delta II is flying out of Vandenberg AFB next Thursday morning at 6:20AM local time. http://spaceflightnow.com/tag/smap/

The launch *may* be visible from Los Angeles. If so I will forward additional information from this great mailing list that you may want to join http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/launch-alert

Onboard the upper stage are 3 PPODs with 4 CubeSats inside:

GRIFEX: 3U. 9k6 with an Astrodev Li-1 radio  437.485 MHz
EXOCUBE: 3U. Variable up to 38k4 with a CW preamble 437.270 MHz
FIREBIRD-IIA (FU3): 1.5U 19k2 with an Astrodev Li-1 radio on 437.405 MHz
FIREBIRD-IIB (FU4): 1.5U 19k2 with an Astrodev Li-1 radio on 437.230 MHz

This information and preliminary TLEs are available at
http://www.dk3wn.info/p/?p=54555

Based on this orbital information, we'll have a pass Thursday starting at 5:01PM local time (orbit 7). We'll be tracking in Boelter (since Knudsen isn't online yet). For those of you that haven't seen an early-orbit satellite pass, I'd encourage you to attend, but only if you attend a clean pass from an established satellite first (Kyle and I will pick out a few convenient ones and send out another email). 

Based on our current capabilities, we'll be focusing on GRIFEX and EXOCUBE. However, it is important to note that the Firebirds are the ones that resemble ELFIN the most from an RF perspective.

73,
NX1U

-- 
Ryan Caron
Associate Development Engineer
UCLA - Institute of Geophysics & Planetary Physics
Tel 310-267-0696   |   Cell 603-801-8233