Kibo Robot Arm CubeSat Deployment

Sixteen educational satellites are under construction in Japan. The first should be launched in May 2012 followed by the others over the next two years.

HORYU-2 Structural Thermal Model

The first to launch is the amateur radio satellite HORYU-2 built by students at the Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT). The launch is on a Japanese H-IIA rocket planned for May 17 at 1639-1642 UT.

The mission aims to take pictures of the Earth using a small CMOS camera SCAMP (Surrey Camera Payload) developed by the University of Surrey, a sister university of KIT. SCAMP takes a 640×480 pixel picture in a JPEG format. From 700 km altitude, one pixel corresponds to 1.6 km.

HORYU-2 will be followed in July by the launch of the HTV3 to the International Space Station (ISS). This will deliver the JEM-Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) along with the Japanese CubeSats WE-WISH, FITSAT-1 and RAIKO. These CubeSats should be deployed from the ISS in September using the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) robot arm.

Takushi Tanaka JA6AVG and FITSAT

FITSAT-1, also known as NIWAKA, will use a neodymium magnet for attitude control. It has multiple downlinks, CW on 437.250 MHz, AX.25 on 437.445 MHz and a 4 watt high speed data transmitter on 5840 MHz capable of sending a 640 by 480 VGA JPEG image in 6 seconds.

In addition it carries high power LEDs that will be driven with 100W pulses to produce extremely bright flashes. These, it is hoped, will be observable by the unaided eye or with small binoculars. Both the 5840 MHz and optical downlinks have a high power consumption so it may be that they are only activated over Japan.

In December TSUBAME is planned to be launched on a H-IIA. It aims to have a CW beacon on 437.250 MHz and AX.25 1200/9600bps telemetry on 437.505 MHz.

The satellite blog run by Mineo Wakita JE9PEL is a good source of information on Japanese satellites, see http://tinyurl.com/JE9PEL-Satellite-Blog

The satellite blog of Nader Omer ST2NH contains a summary of Mineo’s information which is reproduced here:

Horyu-2
http://kitsat.ele.kyutech.ac.jp/what_horyu2_2.html
437.375MHz 1200bps FSK CW
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RAIKO
http://www.astro.mech.tohoku.ac.jp/RAIKO/
2U (10 cm by 10 cm by 20 cm)
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FITSAT-1
http://www.fit.ac.jp/~tanaka/fitsat.shtml
437.250MHz CW, 437.445MHz FM, 5840.00MHz High speed data
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WE WISH
http://www.meisei.co.jp/news/2011/0617_622.html
IR pictures of the earth surface with 320×256 pixels
that will be downlinked in approx 110 secs using SSTV.
437.505MHz SSTV, Telemetry, CW

http://www.meisei.co.jp/english/news/2011/0617_636.html (English Version)

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STARS-II
http://stars1.eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp/
437.245MHz CW (mother), 437.255MHz CW (daughter)
437.405MHz FM (mother), 437.425MHz FM (daughter)
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TeikyoSat
http://sites.google.com/site/spacesystemteikyo/Home/teikyo-sat
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Komolebi
http://www.nano-sat.org/shinshu/files/2010shinshu/09_okamoto.pdf
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KSAT2
http://leo.sci.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/~n-lab/KSAT-HP/Ksat2.html
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INVADER
http://artsat.jp/
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OPUSAT
http://www.sssrc.aero.osakafu-u.ac.jp/OPUSAT_home.html
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ITF-1
http://yui.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Mission 1 Establish human network by amateur satellite
Mission 2 Prove the ability of the micro engineered 1/20 wavelength small antenna
Mission 3 Prove the stable operation of FRAM based microcontroller and
other microcontroller in space environment
437.425 MHz
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RISING-2
http://www.astro.mech.tohoku.ac.jp/RISING-2/
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SPROUT
http://sat.aero.cst.nihon-u.ac.jp/sprout/
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UNIFORM-1
http://www.wakayama-u.ac.jp/ifes/news/20120328.html
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SOCRATES
http://www.aes.co.jp/company/
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TSUBAME
http://lss.mes.titech.ac.jp/ssp/tsubame/
437.505MHz AX.25/SRLL, 9600bps GMSK, 1200bps AFSK
437.250MHz CW
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