FITSAT-1 plans to use LED’s to signal in Morse code

On Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) the Japanese students who built FITSAT-1 are planning to active the satellite’s LED optical array and flash a message in Morse code to Earth. The Morse message may be visible to the unaided eye.

According to Takushi Tanaka JA6AVG the students plan to start testing the optical system at the end of November.

The FITSAT-1 CubeSat was developed by students at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT) in Japan. In addition to the LED array it also has a CW beacon on 437.250 MHz, a data link on 437.445 MHz and a 5840.0 MHz data downlink.

Further FITSAT-1 information at http://www.fit.ac.jp/~tanaka/fitsat.shtml

CubeSats deployed from International Space Station http://www.uk.amsat.org/?page_id=10967