LilacSat-2

Artists impression of LilacSat-2 in orbit

LilacSat-2 (CAS-3H) was launched along with eight other XW-2/CAS-3 amateur radio satellites on Saturday, September 19, 2015 at 23:01:14 UT on Beijing’s new Chang Zheng 6 (CZ-6) rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

The satellite, built by students at the Harbin Institute of Technology, has the call sign BJ1SI and carries an APRS digipeater and a 144/437 MHz FM voice transponder which can transmit telemetry data at the same time as voice by using sub-audible tones.

LilacSat-2

Note: The FM transponder and APRS downlink is 437.200 MHz not that given in the XW-2/CAS-3 Frequency Chart. There is also a telemetry downlink on 437.225 MHz. Further information is given on the LilacSat-2 website Radio Info page.

There is a SSB/CW linear transponder capability which was tested on July 10, 2016. The 40 kHz wide transponder is Non-Inverting which means the Doppler shift of a signal going through the transponder will be twice that seen on other LEO linear transponder satellites. The frequencies are:
• 144.3425-144.3825 MHz Uplink
• 437.180-437.220 MHz Downlink

LilacSat-2 is scheduled to switch on the FM transponder for 24 hours at about 2200 UT each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Remember the Doppler shift on the downlink during a pass will be about +/- 10 kHz. If your radio has selectable FM filters use the wider filter designed for 5 kHz deviation FM, sometimes referred to as a 25 kHz channel spacing filter.

LilacSat-2 was deployed into a 528 km by 551 km 97.5 degree inclination orbit. The NASA Orbital Lifetime Software indicates the satellite might remain in orbit for 18 years before reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

First LilacSat-2 infrared image Sept 24, 2015

Wei Mingchuan, BG2BHC provides this report on the first 16 hours in space:

During the first 16 hours in orbit, we have received nearly 1000 packets of LilacSat-2 from Harbin (BY2HIT), Shihezi (B0/BY2HIT), Nanjing (BI4ST), Xian (Northwestern Polytechnical University) and Singapore (9V1SV). Many thank to all!

Now we have a Linux LiveCD for telemetry decoding released.

We have support for FCDPP, USRP and RTL-SDR. Not hard to edit the GRC flowcharts to support other devices.

It can be burned into a USB stick to boot a computer directly, run from a virtual machine or installed into a hard disk. The User manual is also included.

It can be downloaded from: http://pan.baidu.com/s/1eQfNsGE

LilacSat-2 Live CD also has a magnet link with the help of M6SIG:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:doljmvwcvpnj3iaqfkiwu6bjienko5iv&dn=lilacsat-2_livecd_20150918.iso

More details: http://lilacsat.hit.edu.cn/?page_id=257

73!
Wei Mingchuan, BG2BHC