The NRCSD-26 mission, sponsored by ISS National Lab, includes five CubeSats carrying projects designed by students at universities in Canada. In addition to their scientific objectives, these projects provide hands-on experience and promote interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) studies and careers. During the week, crew members installed hardware to set up for deployment of these satellites:
Nanoracks-RADSAT-SK tests a radiation detection system and radiation protection from a purified form of melanin, a natural pigment found in many organisms.
Nanoracks-SC-ODIN captures data on dust in storms in Argentina and Namibia and monitors radiation received over time inside and outside of the satellite.
Nanoracks-ESSENCE monitors solar storms, arctic ice, permafrost thaw, and forests in the Canadian Arctic region and demonstrates recovery of attitude if one of a satelliteās actuators fails.
Nanoracks-Iris observes weathering of geological samples from direct solar and background cosmic radiation and determines whether changes are visually detectable over short time scales.
Nanoracks-Ukpik-1 captures 360-degree images and video of Northern Canada with a virtual reality (VR) camera and facilitates educational outreach and public engagement in Ontario and Nunavut.
VERY much subject to change as more info is gathered, but preliminary freq assignments from ITU filings, as well as a comment about Sat #6 from the NanoRacks website:
We are also flying Moonlighter, the worldās first ever hacking sandbox in space! Moonlighter is a 3U CubeSat built by The Aerospace Corporation, purposely designed to advance the understanding of cybersecurity as it applies to space systems. The CubeSat will be used at the DEFCON conference by the Air Force/Space Force to engage cybersecurity professionals by challenging them to hack a real-life satellite. Learn more about Moonlighter and the Hack-a-Sat challenge. https://hackasat.com/
Looks like 6 cubesats lifted off to ISS on SpaceX CRS-28 for a later deployment at some point soon after. Five cubesats from Canada ā RADSAT(-SK) IARU, UKPIK IARU, SC-ODIN IARU, ESSENCE IARU requested, Iris info and US Air Force Research Labās Moonlighter āhack-a-satā challenge. I didnāt see any of these in DB in in the forum, apologies if they are documented somewhere and I missed it. No real mention of the cubesats themselves for this launch on the nasaspaceflight forum like weād normally seeā¦
Iāve received an email from William VE4VR, an amateur affiliated with the IRIS Cubesat team. I informed him that unfortunately due to the lack of IARU coordination, we have a policy of limiting tracking to that needed for Space Situational Awareness. Iāve also pointed him to this thread and to the SatNOGS chat room on Matrix.
He provided me with a little more info:
Satellite = University of Manitoba, Iris CubeSat
Receive = 436.250
Mode = 9600 (Tested with KPC-9612)
Data = KISS Mode + CSP Packets
If I recall correctly, this is also an AX100 radio operating in Mode 5 (ASM+GOLAY), so that should be FSK 9600.
Iāve scheduled a couple of observations for the next 48 hours. To station owners have in mind when you schedule that we use ISS TLE set, so leave some passes for ISS scheduling too.
Still no signal from any of the Satellites until now. It is interesting that in the previous NRCSD deployment 2 from 6 were alive for less than a day and then they also went silent.
Iām starting wondering if something goes wrong with these kind of deployments or it is just random.
