Lightcube

Lightcube at delivery

LightCube is a 1U Cubesat with an outreach and accessibility goal of providing a connection to space and to the night sky. It does this by providing a momentary flash of light that is visible to the naked eye and can be triggered by any amateur radio operator.

ElaNa #50, Whats on board? 3/8/2023.

Status

Deployed and confirmed beaconing
Public Flash Trigger: Closed
TLE (updated 24 April 1800 PT)
LIGHTCUBE 1 99165U 23033XXX 123114.50347222 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0
2 XXXXX 51.5364 234.2242 0008904 243.7630 219.3857 15.50958337

Transponder

Operation Frequency: 437.175 MHz
Modulation: FM (Narrowband) 2.5 kHz
Command/Response: DTMF tone sequence
Transmitter Power: 1W - 5W
Beacon Transmits every 30s. Data encoding details TBD

Telemetry Encoding:

Updates

22 April 2023

Deployment from the ISS is set for 24 April 2023 at 05:30 Pacific Time.

24 April 2023

Deployed from ISS
Beacon received by satnogs users and at ASU ground station
Lightcube assigned temporary NORAD ID 99165
Provisional TLE
LIGHTCUBE 1 99165U 23033XXX 123114.50347222 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0
2 XXXXX 51.5364 234.2242 0008904 243.7630 219.3857 15.50958337

25 April 2023

Heartbeat telemetry decoded from audio recordings! Battery at 88% and charging. Packet definition and flowgraphs now linked above. Operations discussion at Librespace.

New TLE based on Satnogs observations.

LightCube 1 99165U 23115.20000000 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 07
2 99165 51.6414 230.2247 0005920 174.6015 220.5620 15.50201805 07