Tracking Oceansat :

Yes, hams can track and receive all these four cubesats, as they are using amateur frequencies for beacon and telemetry down link. The orbit chosen is a sun-synchronous polar orbit, i.e. always the satellites will appear at the same place at the same time with respect to a particular sun aspect angle. In this mission, the Oceansat in particular, would be exactly crossing the equator right below the Sun. So every day, Oceansat would make a first appearance in its south bound pass over Bay of Bengal and around 99 minutes later, over Arabian sea. And of course, all the cubesats would follow this only for few days and their timing and synchronization would be little off course due to drag and decay and these cubesats are not carrying any propulsion system for orbit correction unlike Oceansat.

However for our interest, these cubesats would be available over India twice around every noon and twice every late night. Try these sats using ORBITRON.

Including these four cubesats, PSLV has so far launched 15 satellites carrying amateur radio as payloads, beacons and telemetry transmitters on-board. PSLV/ISRO would soon make a record for having launched highest number of satellites by a single Space agency for amateur radio services. There are few more cubesats lined up to be launched in the forth coming PSLV launches.

The following are the frequencies and modes:

1. BEESat

CALL-SIGN:DP0BEE

Beacon:436.000 Mhz CW

Downlink:436.000 Mhz
Modulation: GMSK

Data Rate: 4800/9600 bits/s

2. UWE-2

CALL-SIGN: Nil

Beacon: Nil

Downlink:437.385 Mhz
Modulation: 1200 bits/s AFSK 9600 bits/s FSK

Data Rate: 1200/9600 bits/s

3. ITUpSat 1

CALL-SIGN: Nil

Beacon: 437.325 CW

Downlink:437.325 Mhz
Modulation: GFSK

Data Rate: 1200 bits/s

4. SWISSCUBE

CALL-SIGN: HB9EG

Beacon: 437.505 CW

Downlink:437.505 Mhz
Modulation: FSK

Data Rate: 1200 bits/s

Happy Hamming through sats !!

Courtesy : OM Mani, VU2WMY