AESP-14 CubeSat

The AESP-14 is a 1U CubeSat developed by undergraduate and graduate engineering students at the Technology Institute of Aeronautics (ITA) in Brazil. The satellite’s primary mission is to test the various subsystems in the space environment.

AESP-14 CubeSat released from ISS – Photo by Samantha Cristoforetti IZ0UDF

The satellite was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) as cargo on the SpaceX Falcon 9 mission CRS-5. Launch had been scheduled for December 16, 2014 but was postponed three times and it wasn’t until January 10, 2015 that the launch eventually took place. Since arriving at the ISS on January 12 AESP-14 has been awaiting deployment by the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) which is in the Japanese Experimental Module, Kibo.

The deployment took place around 1250 UT on Thursday, February 5. The AESP-14 telemetry beacon has a power output of 500 mW and uses AX.25 with 9600 bps GMSK modulation (G3RUH standard) on 437.600 MHz. It should have started transmitting 30 minutes after deployment but as of February 11 nothing had been heard. It may be the battery did not survive several months without being recharged or the antenna may have failed to deploy.

AESP-14 CubeSat deployment from ISS – Image JAXA

The AESP-14 team would like to ask the help of radio amateurs around the world to forward any received telemetry frames back to the team. For this, please save the AX.25 frames in KISS format and forward the file to aesp14@ita.br

The satellite has an amateur radio experiment developed by the Americana Amateur Radio Club (CRAM). The experiment consists of the random transmission of 100 sequences of ASCII characters prefixed with the “CRAM” word that will used as part of a contest among receiving stations. The first 10 amateur radio stations that complete receiving the 100 sequences will be awarded a commemorative diploma. Further details at http://wabicafe.com.br/aesp14/cram.php

AESP-14 website http://www.aer.ita.br/~aesp14

Telemetry information sheet http://www.aer.ita.br/~aesp14/AESP-14Telemetry.pdf

AESP-14 CubeSat released from International Space Station
http://www.spaceflight101.com/iss-expedition-42-updates-february-2015.html

AMSAT-UK thanks Edson Pereira PY2SDR for this information.