Nayif-1 team members after completion of the assembly and integration of the CubeSat

The assembly and integration of the Nayif-1 satellite at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was completed on September 4, 2015. Nayif-1 is now being shipped to The Netherlands for final environmental testing.

Emirates Mars Mission Science Team Lead Sarah Amiri ‏@SarahAmiri1 tweeted: “@Nayifone @AUSharjah congratulations on the completion of this milestone”

This video shows the Nayif-1 Antenna Deployment Testing being performed

This mission is intended to provide Emirati students with a tool to design and test systems in space. It is developed by the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) in partnership with American University of Sharjah (AUS). It is expected that this payload will provide a large amount of valuable environmental data from space together with a new, enhanced, amateur radio UHF to VHF linear transponder.

Hessa Ali working on the control system of Nayif-1

The spacecraft will only require simple ground station antennas and an SDR dongle receiver. This will make it uncomplicated for schools and colleges to use with their students.

It is anticipated Nayif-1 will be launched into an elliptical, sun synchronous, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) about 400 by 750 km in late 2015 or early 2016 on a SpaceX Falcoln 9. In such an orbit the satellite passes over the Emirates at least twice a day. This would allow the morning passes to be used for educational purposes and the evening passes for Amateur Radio communications.

The student team will develop and operate a special ground station for this spacecraft. They will also be developing a unique “Dashboard” to display the received telemetry data and greetings messages in Arabic.

IARU coordinated frequencies for NAYIF-1:
• 145.940 MHz 1200 bps BPSK FUNcube beacon
• 500 mW inverting SSB/CW linear transponder
– 435.045-435.015 MHz Uplink
– 145.960-145.990 MHz Downlink

Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre https://twitter.com/MBRSpaceCentre
American University of Sharjah https://twitter.com/AUSharjah
Nayif-1 https://twitter.com/Nayifone

Nayif-1 CubeSat information https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/communications/nayif-1/

Hessa Ali and Maitha Al Shizawi verifying the Nayif-1 hardware as well as conducting electrical and functional tests