Picosatellite Mission Summary

The following is a summary of the picosatellite missions of OPAL. All six picosatellites were successfully deployed from the mothership. See below for the details.

Aerospace Picosatellites

Aerospace successfully operated the world's smallest civilian satellites! Based on satellite log files, the time of launch was approximately Feb. 06, 2000 (Sunday) 19:34:16 L (Pacific Time). Their primary mission objective of validating an array of MEMS RF switches was achieved. More details on the mission are online.

The Aerospace picos were the first ones to be fired from Opal. The commanding of ejection did not go as smoothly as hoped. Ground communication with Opal was virtually non-existent through Opal's primary communication system at Stanford's ground station. Attempts were made to use the auxilary reciever onboard Opal through commands sent from Lars' Karlsson's station. These attempts failed. Finally, successful contact was made with Opal around Feb 2 through SRI's 50 meter dish behind Opal. During attempts to fire the picos at the big dish, a spurious tone cropped on Opal's transmission that rendered data downloaded from Opal undecodable. We could not understand Opal. Greg Hutchins, Opal's primary operator, reconfigured the ground station equipment and was able to command Opal despite despite the spurious tone issue. This method was also used to fire JAK and STENSAT. (For those of you who know TNCs, we entered KISS mode rather than AX.25 and faked acknowledgements up to Opal. This allowed us to send up several commands to Opal without being about to hear it.)

As Aerospace publishes results, we'll make them availabe. Good job Aerospace!

STENSAT Picosatellite

STENSAT was successfully fired at approximately 02/11/2000 02:59:13 UTC. A summary of the firing and the dramatic events surrounding it is online.

Unfortunately, no confirmed contacts have been made with STENSAT. Detailed information is found on their homepage. We'll attempt to contact STENSAT through the big dish the first week of March.

Artemis Picosatellites

• JAK - JAK was launched with STENSAT at approximately 02/11/2000 02:59:13 UTC. No receptions of JAK's beacon were reported. Possible partial beacons were reported but we believe this to be from Opal rather than JAK. Expected output was a morse code beacon containing a URL. Due to limited battery life, it is believed JAK ceased operating by 02/13/2000.
  
  
• T and L - Thelma and Louise (or Thunder and Lightning if you prefer) were successfully launched at approximately Sat 12Feb00 05:40:19 PST. Possible signals were received but nothing confirmed. No lightning data was downloaded. Due to limited battery life, it is believed T and L ceased operating by 02/15/00.