Antares-110 Amateur Radio CubeSat Integration Completed

Antares-110 CubeSat Integration - Image Credit Spaceflight Inc

Image Credit Spaceflight Inc

Several CubeSats carrying amateur radio payloads are planned to launch on the Antares-110 mission in April.

On the CubeSat mailing list Jason Andrews President and CEO of both Spaceflight Inc and Andrews Space posted:

Spaceflight Inc recently completed CubeSat integration activities for the Antares demonstration mission including deployment dress rehersal.  Spaceflight has two ISIPod deployers on this mission.  One contains three 1U spacecraft for NASA Ames Research Center and the other contains a 3U spacecraft for a commercial customer.  An image of the integration activity can be found here:

https://twitter.com/SpaceflightInc/status/306880665624924161/photo/1

Among the amateur radio CubeSats on the launch are three Phonesats which will all carry Google Nexus smartphones similar to the pioneering UK smartphone satellite STRaND-1 that was launched in February. There will be two PhoneSat 1.0’s and one PhoneSat 2.0 on the launch.

PhoneSat 1.0 cost about $3500 and is built around the Nexus One smartphone, it operates on battery power only with a mission lifetime of approx 1 week.

PhoneSat 2.0 is more expensive at $8000. It is built around the Nexus S smartphone and has solar panels on each face and a mission lifetime until de-orbit of approximately 2 weeks.

The IARU amateur satellite frequency coordination panel have coordinated frequencies of 437.425 MHz and 2401.2-2431.2MHz for the PhoneSats.

Also on the launch is the Dove-1 CubeSat. The Antares-110 launcher is expected to deploy the satellites into a 250 km 51.6° inclination orbit.