I’m sorry to report that despite coordinated efforts between Japanese and European teams we have not been able to receive any signal from UNITEC-1 over Europe. Japanese ground stations were able to receive both the orbit determination downlink and the major/minor data downlink during the first pass after launch; however, the signal has been lost during the first mission day sometime between LOS over Japan and AOS over Europe.
deep space
Preparing the 7m antenna for UNITEC-1
AMSAT OZ staff are preparing the 7 meter dish for tracking the UNITEC-1 interplanetary spacecraft. Related articles: UNITEC-1 Link Budget C-band Receiver Hardware for UNITEC-1 UNITEC-1 5.8 GHz Receiver Test Using OZ7IGY Smaller dish for tracking UNITEC-1 5.8 GHz Helical Feed for the 90cm dish UNITEC-1 Tracking Report
UNITEC-1: A New Deep Space Adventure
If everything goes according to current plans, JAXA will launch their PLANET-C spacecraft towards Venus on May 18, 2010. To fill out the empty space and available payload mass on the H-IIA rocket, they will also bring four university built cubesats into orbit. One of these cubesats, UNITEC-1, is very special in that it will … Read more