FITSAT-1 CubeSat Flight over Erie, Pennsylvania - December 12, 2012 Smorgasbord / Kirt's
Cogitations™ #343
"Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and
"Tech Topics Smorgasbord"
are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the
overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:
I stayed up late on the night of of
December 11, 2012 (early in the
morning, actually) to watch the FITSAT-1 CubeSat satellite flash its Morse code "HI DE NIWAKA JAPAN" message
via super-bright LEDs over eastern North America. It was scheduled to pass just
south of my location in Erie, Pennsylvania, at 1:14 AM, with a lights-on intensity
great enough to be easily seen with binoculars.
FITSAT-1 is
a project conceived of and built by professors and students at the Fukuoka Institute
of Technology (FIT) in Japan. In addition to the LED visual display, the satellite
also carries several Amateur Radio payloads including a CW beacon on 437.250 MHz,
a telemetry beacon on 437.445 MHz and a high-speed data downlink on 5,840.0 MHz.
The CubeSat Project was developed by California Polytechnic State University
and Stanford University's Space Systems Development Lab. It creates launch opportunities
for universities previously unable to access space. A CubeSat is 10 cm on a
side and may have a mass of up to 1.33 kg. Launch vehicles sell space to CubeSats
for around $40,000, which makes them very affordable to place in orbit. Kits of
parts available from a number of suppliers range from around $6,000 for the frame
and power supply to about $40,000 for an entire launchable platform.
FITSAT-1 was launched from the International Space Station (ISS) at 15:44 (UTC)
on October 4, 2012. Orbital tracking is provided in real time on the
Visual SAT-Flare
3-D website. The screenshots below were obtained just one minute before I went
outside to look for the satellite. As can be seen in the sky track map on the right
(annotations added by me for identification), FITSAT-1 would pass directly through
one of the most prominent objects in the winter sky:
The Pleiades asterism
in the constellation of Taurus (often mistaken for the Little Dipper). That would
make the satellite easy to spot even for someone not familiar with the night sky.
Amazingly, the path also crossed very close to the brightest star in Andromeda (Alpheratz),
the brightest star in Taurus (Aldebaran), the 2nd brightest star in Orion (Betelgeuse),
and midway between the brightest star in the entire northern hemisphere (Sirius
in Canis Major) and the 7th brightest (Procyon in Canis Minor). The intensity of
the LEDs would vary between about magnitude 7 (roughly the brightness of the dimmest
of the six main stars in The Pleiades) and magnitude 12 (larger number is less bright).
There is only one thing that could possibly keep a seasoned sky navigator like
me from spotting FITSAT-1: clouds. Guess what? The sky had been mostly clear along
the flight path up until around 10 PM. Accuweather predicted a further clearing
through the night. By 1:10 AM, the entire sky was clouded over with only a
rare opening. *@(#$*%^@!!!!! I grabbed the binoculars and frantically looked for
a reference point. For a brief moment I found The Pleiades, but clouds quickly obscured
them again. After all the planning I didn't get even a glimpse of FITSAT-1. When
I got out of bed at 7:15 AM, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, from horizon
to horizon! Life can suck sometimes. Hopefully, the tiny craft will still be in
operation at a later date to give me a second chance at it.
FITSAT-1 Earth and Sky Track Maps
This video shows the building and launching processes for FITSAT-1
Posted August 15, 2022 (updated from original post on 12/12/2012)
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail"
when a new message arrived...
Copyright 1996 - 2026
All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images
and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged.
"
