The Jugnu team say the continuous stream of satellite beacon reports from Radio Amateurs across the world surpassed all their expectations. The team welcome further reports.

On the AMSAT bulletin board Chintalagiri Shashank writes:

I’m the system engineer for the Jugnu nanosatellite project. This is the nanosatellite which is more generally known on this list as JNU, since that was the identifier sent along with the TLE. I’ve been lurking on this list for the past couple of years, ever since we started working on the nanosatellite. I did learn a lot from occasionally perusing through the posts here. Not being a licensed HAM myself, I apologize for intruding into your space here today.

On behalf of the entire Jugnu team, I’d like to thank all of you for the beacon reports you’ve sent our way, both on the list as well as through Mani (VU2WMY). Its been a long couple of years on the project, but the last few days have been a much more intense roller coaster ride. The continuous stream of beacon reports from across the world surpassed all of our expectations, and were the mainstay of our emotional support while we were having difficulties recieving the beacon ourselves. If I do get to meet any of you in person, the beer’s on me.

The telemetry gathered by HAMs across the world has been extremely useful in our analysis of the spacecraft’s condition. I hope to be able to release, at least partially, the details of the format for the beacon string in a couple of days. In the meanwhile, we welcome any additional telemetry that you can send our way. Even information about the AOS/LOS has been very useful in trying to figure out where exactly the satellite is.

NORAD / celestrak has released 5 TLE’s tagged with the PSLV C-18 launch (2011-058<A-E>). We arent yet sure which one, if any, is Jugnu. We do know that SRMSat is one of the cluster of 3 objects (B,C,D). We’ve been able to recieve our beacon when we attempt to track C, but the signal strength is low and we generally see it clearly only near AOS. Due to reasons I’m probably not allowed to discuss in public, we have reason to believe that Jugnu is moving away from the other objects (SRMSat, VesselSat, and until later today, MT) at a velocity of approximately 1.5 to 3 meters per second since separation from LV. We expect this velocity to be tangential to the orbit. If you’re trying to track Jugnu, I would suggest that for the moment, C is a good starting point, and it may be better to track a little ahead of
it. We will be trying to do the same in some of the later passes ourselves.

In the case of SRMSat, we’ve had good signals at object B until earlier today, but we think that C did a better job of it in the last decent pass we had earlier this evening, about 6 hours ago.

I’d be more than delighted to try and answer any questions you may have about Jugnu, so please feel free to contact me on or off list if you would like to know more about it.

Thanks and Regards,

Chintalagiri Shashank

Head, System Integration and Electronic Hardware Design,
Jugnu Nanosatellite Project
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Blog: http://blog.chintal.in/
Email: shashank.chintalagiri at gmail.com

JUGNU 437.275 MHz reports should be sent to
wmy@isac.gov.in
shantag@iitk.ac.in
Web: http://www.iitk.ac.in/me/jugnu/index.htm

SRMSAT 437.425 MHz reports should be sent to KC2YQJ <at> arrl.net
Web: http://srmsat.in/srmvu.html

Note due to the 20 degree inclination orbit these satellites are not receivable in high latitude countries such as the United Kingdom.

Getting started on Amateur Radio Satellites PDF
http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/05/09/getting-started-on-amateur-radio-satellites/