The Safir launcher carrying Iran’s Fajr satellite February 2, 2015

Nico Janssen PA0DLO reports that the Iranian Fajr satellite has an amateur radio band downlink on 437.538 MHz. UPDATE from Gunters Space page: On February 26 Fajr re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after 23.8 days in orbit apparently without using the cold-gas thruster.

Iranian Fajr satellite launched Feb 2, 2015 – thanks to Tal Inbar @inbarspace

On the AMSAT Bulletin Board (AMSAT-BB) Nico says that it carries a camera for Earth observations and should have a telemetry downlink on 437.538 MHz and a command uplink in the 144-146 MHz amateur radio band.

The Iranian satellite Fajr or ‘Dawn’ was launched on February 2, 2015 at 0850 UT from the Imam Khomeini Space Center which is south of Semnan in the northern part of the Dasht-e-Kavir desert.

The 52 kg satellite was carried on a Safir launcher into an initial orbit of 223 km by 470 km with an inclination of 55.5° and has been given an object ID of 2015-006A 40387. It is Iran’s fourth satellite and its first successful orbital launch since Feb 2012. Fajr has propulsion in the form of a cold gas thruster which can be used to circularize the orbit at around 470 km which may give it a lifetime of over a year.

Fajr real-time tracking map and predictions http://n2yo.com/?s=40387

UHF satellite frequency list http://www.satellitenwelt.de/freqlisten/SatFreq-UHF.txt

AMSAT Bulletin Board http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb

Fajr has cold gas thrusters – thanks to Tal Inbar @inbarspace for posting this image