Just over three years ago, Brigham Young University launched its first pair of cubesats, PIC-A and PIC-B. These satellites were never heard from, and it was presumed that their transmitters were faulty.
Recently, a ground station received a signal that matched one of the PICs satellites. We are hopeful that we may yet be able to receive data from one of these satellites. A small team of students at BYU is now working on reactivating our ground station.
We are hoping to get help from the SatNogs network in listening for these satellites where possible. Our satellites are not in the SatNogs database. Is there a way that out satellites can be added to the database? Is there another way we can leverage the SatNogs network in listening for these satellites?
One unique challenge in listening for these satellites is their downlink frequencies of roughly 904 MHz. However, it looks like there are at least a handful of SatNogs stations capable of receiving that frequency. Any help would be appreciated.
Info on the satellites:
PIC-A
International designator: 2021-002J
Frequency: 904.8 MHZ
PIC-B
International designator: 2021-002K
Frequency: 904.4 MHZ
However they are unidentified, which means we are not sure if the objects we follow are indeed the satellites. From the specific launch there are at least 4 unidentified objects according to space-track.org, this means that there is at most 25% probability for each satellite to follow the right object.
Given that BYU haven’t received the satellites, is there any other reason you follow this objects, or it is just a random choice (like we do in SatNOGS DB)?
I’ve scheduled observations for PIC-A and PIC-B in Network. Unfortunately there aren’t many stations that support frequencies around 903MHz, and those who do are mostly stations without special tuning around this frequency. So, I don’t expect many results, unless there is a strong signal and a high elevation pass.
Anyway, for making observation results analysis easier, please give us more details about the signal that PIC satellites transmit, in DB we have GMSK19k2, is this the modulation and the baudrate that satellites use? Also it might be useful if you can share more details on the observation and the signal you have received.
Are the frequencies you wrote right? We use 903.8 MHz and 903.4 MHz, as noted in the FCC license, if this is not accurate let me know to fix it in DB and observe the right frequencies in the next observations.
Given the known / last tle’s there should have been 6 passes of each A and B over Europe last night. Unfortunately I noticed totally no dopplered signals in the last 12 hours of strf in that range, not even on different frequencies.
