New Satellite Suggestion: ACRUX-1 - launch on 29th June at 4:30UTC

Satellites & Observations
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On the next RocketLab Electron launch, Melbourne Space Program’s ACRUX-1 will be launched. It is a 1U CubeSat built by students at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where I got my undergraduate electrical engineering degree :smile:

It is the second satellite built by Melbourne Uni students. You may have heard of the first: Australis OSCAR 5 (AO-5) which was also the first satellite launched by the newly formed AMSAT! :slight_smile:

It has been coordinated with the IARU at 437.200 MHz 9k6 GMSK

http://www.amsatuk.me.uk/iaru/finished_detail.php?serialnum=644

According to Gunter’s Space page, other satellites include BlackSky Global, Prometheus-2 5?, Prometheus-2 6?, SpaceBEE 8, 9, ?

According to Twitter, the next launch window opens at 2019-06-27T06:30:00

73,
Alan
KU2Y

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@KU2Y Thanks for the info!

ACRUX-1 Entry in SatNOGS DB

I have used temporary NORAD ID 99964.

Now we need TLE for scheduling observations in Network.

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Hi!
I generated a pre-launch TLE based on the published target orbit (450 km x 450 km from the PressKit) with the inclination of BlackSky Global-1 (97.48°, source: skyrocket.de - BlackSky Global) for a launch :rocket: at the beginning of the window (2019-06-27T04:30:00Z) using sattools by @cgbsat.

ELECTRON
1 84003U          19178.18750000  .00000000  00000-0  50000-4 0    04
2 84003  97.4800 346.5340 0000001   0.0000 219.5621 15.38685052    00

Launch site including marine safety area (source: Public-viewing-restrictions-Make-It-Rain2.pdf):

image
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Take it as a first guess (this is only the second time I’ve done this). :slight_smile: :computer:

Sincerely,
kerel / Fabian P. Schmidt

update: The launch will likely be at 2019-06-27T04:40:00 (source: RocketLab tweet), updated TLE (using launchtle from sattools (explanation post):

1 84003U          19178.19444444  .00000000  00000-0  50000-4 0    07
2 84003  97.4800 349.0408 0000001   0.0000 219.5621 15.38685052    03
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Thanks @kerel for the TLE. I’ve just scheduled some observation for the first ~12 hours.

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Problem the laucnh is at 2019-06-28T4:40:0 according to the rocket lab site.

Targeting no earlier than 28 June UTC.

Target lift-off no earlier than 04:30 UTC

https://twitter.com/RocketLab/status/1144053098719002624

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There are now some TLE (for 27th June) in ACRUX-1 site:

ACRUX-1-preliminary
1 99999U 18001A   19179.22247685  .00000000  00000-0  40148-2 0    55
2 99999  45.0237 288.3238 0014041 260.8755 155.5228 15.39805332    02

Probably they will be updated for tomorrow’s (28th June) launch.

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The epoch of the ACRUX-1-preliminary TLE you posted is 2019-06-28T05:20:22Z, so this is probably for the (28th June) launch already.

Due to the 45° inclination of this TLE the launch azimuth matches with the marine safety area now (the small green polygon):

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Launch is postpoponed for the next window starting at 2019-06-29 4:30 UTC

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Latest TLE from https://melbournespace.com.au/acrux-1-beacon-telemetry-information/

ACRUX-1-preliminary
1 99999U 18001A   19180.22247685  .00000000  00000-0  40148-2 0    68
2 99999  45.0237 289.3095 0014040 260.8773 155.5210 15.39805221    01

Observations for the first 5h are scheduled, if the launch doesn’t get postponed again more observations will be scheduled.

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The launch was on time, more observations of ACRUX-1 for the next 24h have been scheduled.

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Acrux-1 was received, however not consistently, we’ll keep watching.

The are post-launch TLE:

ACRUX-1-post-launch
1 99998U 18001A   19180.22396991  .00000000  00000-0  38994-2 0    13
2 99998  45.0092 289.1016 0011360 272.6068 154.6569 15.37628226    03
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Decodes and some data plots can be found here:

Data is decoded from a nice observation from @vk5qi!

I have just added a decoder for ACRUX-1 to satnogs-decoders - a dashboard will follow as soon as there is a fixed NORAD ID available and people start transmitting data (either via SiDS or via SatNOGS network) for it!

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From latest good observations ACRUX-1 is one of 44369-44371, changed to follow 44370 in network

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I’ve processed a IQ file for https://network.satnogs.org/observations/782439/ with direwolf.

The packets can be found here :

IQ file (complex, 48k) is here https://t.co/yVEoVYsLuy

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There was a request on IRC #cubesat channel for trying to receive the satellite PAINANI-1. The person that requested that said that this satellite was in this launch.

It’s not coordinated by IARU but it has a request for coordination. I’ve added it into the DB and I’m going to schedule a couple of observations to test if it is a valid case, as there isn’t any other reference on this satellite or that it was in this rocket.

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I can confirm that the packets received in observation #783079 (https://network.satnogs.org/observations/783079/) were decoded using the FSK flowgraph, not the MSK one. I had intentionally changed my settings.py file to force the use of the FSK flowgraph to see if it would work - and it does.

So it might be worth changing the modulation type to FSK9k6.

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Also, I’m pretty sure object 44369 fits best to ACRUX-1 at the moment: https://twitter.com/vk5qi/status/1145224340226445312

Nothing sighted on 437.475 MHz from PAINANI-1 on any of my STRF observations.

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ACRUX-1 changed to follow 44369 in network, also we have changed temporarily the decoder to GFSK, in order to be able to decode, as GMSK decoder doesn’t work very well.

@DL4PD has set up dashboard for ACRUX-1.

.

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There is a small chance we have a beacon of ACRUX-1 in this observation:

https://network.satnogs.org/observations/813994/

However two other stations at the same period didn’t get anything. The difference between station #232 and the other two is that #232 has directional yagi antenna instead of omni ones on the other two.

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I did notice that, and wasn’t sure if it was ACRUX or not… hard to tell without a valid decode.