Lituanica SAT-1

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Lituanica SAT-1
LituanicaSAT-1.jpg
Operator Vilnius University, Innovative Engineering Projects, NPO
COSPAR ID 1998-067EN
SATCAT no. 39569
Website www.astronauts.lt
Mission duration5 months deployed, 6 months 19 days in space (planned mission: 6 months)
Spacecraft properties
ManufacturerInnovative Engineering Projects, NPO
Dry mass1090 g.
Start of mission
Launch date9 January 2014, 18:07 (2014-01-09UTC18:07Z) UTC
Rocket Antares 120
Launch site MARS LP-0A
Contractor Orbital Sciences
Deployed from ISS
Deployment date28 February 2014 (2014-02-28)
End of mission
Decay date28 July 2014
Orbital parameters
Reference system Geocentric
Regime Low Earth
 

LituanicaSAT-1 was one of the two first Lithuanian satellites (other one being LitSat-1). It was launched along with the second Cygnus spacecraft and 28 Flock-1 CubeSats aboard an Antares 120 carrier rocket flying from Pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island to the International Space Station. [1] The launch was scheduled to occur in December 2013, but later was rescheduled to 9 January 2014 and occurred then. The satellite was broadcasting greetings of Lithuanian president, Mrs. Dalia Grybauskaitė. The satellite was deployed from the International Space Station via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on February 28, 2014. [2] [3] All LituanicaSAT-1 subsystems have been turned on, tested and proved to be working properly. The mission is considered a complete success by its team of engineers. [4] [5] The mission ended upon the reentry and disintegration of the satellite on July 28, 2014.

Lithuania Republic in Northeastern Europe

Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. Lithuania is considered to be one of the Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden and Denmark. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.8 million people as of 2019, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. Other major cities are Kaunas and Klaipėda. Lithuanians are Baltic people. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of only two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.

LitSat-1 One of the first Lithuanian satelites

LitSat-1 was one of the two first Lithuanian satellites. It was launched aboard the second Cygnus spacecraft along with 28 Flock-1 CubeSats aboard an Antares 120 carrier rocket flying from Pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island. The launch was scheduled to occur in December 2013, but later was rescheduled to 9 January 2014 and occurred then. The satellite was deployed from the International Space Station via the NanoRacks Cubesat Deployer on February 28, 2014. Three Lithuanian words will be broadcast from space "Lietuva myli laisvę". Launch of satellites Lituanica SAT-1 and LitSat-1 was broadcast live in Lithuania.

Flock 1 is a US CubeSat satellite constellation launched on 9 January 2014. The satellite is built in a 3U CubeSat bus, and each constellation consists of 28 satellites. All instruments are powered by solar cells mounted on the spacecraft body, along with triple-folded wings, providing approximately 20 W at maximal power.

Contents

Description

The satellite conforms to standard 1U size cubesat form factor as to the latest cubesat design specifications. The satellite does not have any active systems except the antenna deployment mechanism that is engaged 30 minutes after deployment sequence. Both attitude and thermal control sub-systems are implemented passively for simplicity and safety. The total mass of the body including the equipment within it is 1,090 g.

Subsystems

Attitude determination and control

LituanicaSAT-1 uses passive magnetic attitude control system consisting of permanent magnets that create a control torque and soft magnets that provide dampening torque using hysteresis effect. Following attitude sensors are implemented for attitude determination:

Hysteresis dependence of the state of a system on its history

Hysteresis is the dependence of the state of a system on its history. For example, a magnet may have more than one possible magnetic moment in a given magnetic field, depending on how the field changed in the past. Plots of a single component of the moment often form a loop or hysteresis curve, where there are different values of one variable depending on the direction of change of another variable. This history dependence is the basis of memory in a hard disk drive and the remanence that retains a record of the Earth's magnetic field magnitude in the past. Hysteresis occurs in ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials, as well as in the deformation of rubber bands and shape-memory alloys and many other natural phenomena. In natural systems it is often associated with irreversible thermodynamic change such as phase transitions and with internal friction; and dissipation is a common side effect.

Command and data management

There are two on board computers in LituanicaSAT-1 due to redundancy requirements: the flight computer based on ARM Cortex-M4F microcontroller and secondary (back-up) computer based on an Atmel ATMega2560 microcontroller. The flight computer is the central control unit of the satellite responsible for maintaining the normal operating mode of the satellite, monitoring and control of energy resources, control of attitude determination sub-system and performance of telecommands received from the satellite ground station in Vilnius University, Lithuania. Secondary flight computer is based on Arduino. It ensures limited but safe functionality of the satellite in case of the main CPU failure and will also take and record the first pictures made from space, as well as control the radio beacon of the satellite.

Atmel Corporation was a designer and manufacturer of semiconductors before being acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016. It was founded in 1984. The company focuses on embedded systems built around microcontrollers. Its products include microcontrollers radio frequency (RF) devices including Wi-Fi, EEPROM, and flash memory devices, symmetric and asymmetric security chips, touch sensors and controllers, and application-specific products. Atmel supplies its devices as standard products, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), or application-specific standard product (ASSPs) depending on the requirements of its customers.

Vilnius University oldest university in the Baltic states

Vilnius University is the oldest university in the Baltic states and one of the oldest in Northern Europe. It is the largest university in Lithuania.

Arduino Open source hardware and software platform

Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control both physically and digitally. Its products are licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL), permitting the manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone. Arduino boards are available commercially in preassembled form or as do-it-yourself (DIY) kits.

Payload

The main payload is amateur radio FM mode V/U voice repeater. It operates on 145.950 MHz uplink (PL 67 Hz CTCSS) and 435.180 MHz downlink. The FM repeater subsystem identifies itself with callsign LY5N. The first filter of repeaters receiver is 15 kHz wide, second is 12 kHz. The transmit filter is set to +/- 5 kHz, and bandwidth to 10 kHz, but this width depends highly on the incoming signal width, for example if the uplink signal is 15 kHz wide, it will be cut down with 12 kHz filter. The repeater payload was engineered and developed by Žilvinas Atkočiūnas and Žilvinas Batisa. [6] Due to temperature changes, the downlink frequency may be shifted down by 5 kHz. [7]

Amateur radio use of designated radio frequency spectra for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages

Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, describes the use of radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communication. The term "amateur" is used to specify "a duly authorised person interested in radioelectric practice with a purely personal aim and without pecuniary interest;" and to differentiate it from commercial broadcasting, public safety, or professional two-way radio services.

Power supply subsystem

The power supply sub-system includes a GomSpace Nanopower P31u power board with a lithium-ion battery and solar cells. [8]

Communications subsystem

Comm subsystem consists of AX.25 transceiver and corresponding antennas. He-100 COTS transceiver is used for establishing and maintaining radio communication with the ground station. The key technical specifications of the radio transceiver are as follows:

Antennas

There are 4 monopole antennas on LS-1: three UHF antennas and one VHF antenna. Each antenna is made of approx. 0.2 mm thick and 5 mm wide spring steel measurement tape. In deployed configuration, all UHF antennas are pointed towards the Z+ body axis direction and VHF antenna is pointed toward –Z body axis.

Mission control

The satellite is commanded from Vilnius University amateur radio station, LY1BWB. [9] Ground control software is written in Erlang and has a web interface, served by Yaws. The source code of the software is partly available for public use. [10] Communication is done using custom protocol, which is built on top of reduced set of AX.25 and handles full-duplex data transfer, when required. Recent versions of ground control software support direct upload of binary telemetry files, which were collected and sent to ground control by amateur radio operators worldwide. [11]

OSCAR status

On June 8, 2014, AMSAT-NA OSCAR number administrator Bill Tynan, W3XO, stated that "LituanicaSAT-1 has met all of the requirements for an OSCAR number" and assigned the designation of LO-78 (LituanicaSAT-OSCAR 78) to the satellite. [12] The team of engineers subsequently announced that it will try to keep the onboard FM repeater operative for the rest of the mission. [13]

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References

  1. ↑ Rainey, Kristine (22 July 2015). "It's a March of the CubeSats as Space Station Deployment Continues".
  2. ↑ "NASA - NanoRacks-LituanicaSAT-1". www.nasa.gov.
  3. ↑ "LituanicaSAT-1 CubeSat Update". 14 March 2014.
  4. ↑ "LituanicaSat-1 - AMSAT-UK". amsat-uk.org.
  5. ↑ "LituanicaSat transponder test was a full success". DK3WN SatBlog.
  6. ↑ "LituanicaSat-1 repeater rev.2 – LY3H". ly3h.epalete.com.
  7. ↑ "LituanicaSat – DK3WN SatBlog". www.dk3wn.info.
  8. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 July 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2014.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
  9. ↑ "VU radijo klubas LY1BWB - kolektyvinio radijo mėgėjų tobulėjimo tinklaraštis". www.rk.projektas.vu.lt.
  10. ↑ Petrauskas, Karolis (29 August 2014). "ls1mcs: LituanicaSat-1 MCS" – via GitHub.
  11. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 30 May 2014. Retrieved 9 June 2014.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
  12. ↑ "OSCAR Number for LituanicaSAT-1 – AMSAT-NA". Amsat.org.
  13. ↑ "LituanicaSAT-1 FM Transponder Active". Amsat-uk.org. 6 June 2014.

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