@bastla just notified me that SALSAT - 99826 is existing with prepared transmitter in satnogs-db already, thus the newly created SALSAT - 99789 is a duplicate (posting here as I can’t log-in to gitlab to create an issue, nor I’ve the rights & confidence to delete entries from satnogs-db myself atm).
I updated the original SALSAT - 99826 entry with the correct status (“future”, wasn’t available upon creation) and Country of Origin.
@pierros SALSAT is filed under 117500303 (IFIC 2879). It’s a bit confusing from the outside because SALSAT is the fifth flight spare of S-Net (E) which became then a flight model again – lucky thing!
I added it in DB (https://db.satnogs.org/satellite/99826#mapcontent) but it is not exposed to Network since it is labeled as “Future”
We are trying to optimize our LEOP strategy for such cases and indeed dry runs could be helpful. Good luck tomorrow! We will be hunting you!
Observations are scheduled from the launch time and for the next 12h (not more as we may have changes on TLE sets). Bellow the detailed list, NORAD IDs are temporary ones.
99826 - SALSAT
IARU Coordinated and with details about modulation and decoding.
We are in communication with the team so they will have more observations scheduled
105 Scheduled observations
99788-99785 - NETSAT 1-4
IARU Coodrinated, all transmitting on the same frequency(?), no details about decoding
No communication with the team, scheduled:
82 Scheduled observations
99789 - MEZNSAT
Not coordinated, no details about decoding
There is an issue opened and a related tweet about this satellite but not sure if they are from the team, scheduled for SSA reasons
21 Scheduled observations
To Station Owners, feel free to re-schedule observations if you want to track something else on your stations. Please try not to schedule too far in the future for the first days of the deployment, as TLE sets could change a lot. Please also make sure, while you schedule, you select custom horizon and select 0 horizon value, so observations start and end on 0 degrees, increasing the chances of receiving the satellites with the current preliminary TLE sets.
I’ve added DEKART and NORBY that have accurate frequencies, and we will keep an eye on Yareelo ones that probably are going to transmit around 435MHz, cc’ing @cgbsat@pierros@vk5qi@PE0SAT as they may help on this.
With the new satellites there will be some changes on the scheduled observation of the previous post. Stay tuned…!
Here is a live stream related to the launch from netsat team(not sure if they are going to have actual image from the launch).
Message from chat: “Slavi Dombrovski Based on the preliminary orbit parameters, first two overpasses will be this night between 1:00-4:30am. But we expect first contact tomorrow at ~14:00”
P.S. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense: “On Monday, September 28, at 14 hours 20 minutes (Moscow time), from the launcher (PU) No. 3 of the site No. 43 of the State Test Cosmodrome of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (Plesetsk cosmodrome) in the Arkhangelsk Region, by the Space Forces launched the “Soyuz-2.1b” carrier rocket with the Gonets-M communication spacecraft block and the associated payload of 19 small spacecraft, ”
Usually this kind of satellites can do different baudrates. Typically they’ll have a lower baudrate for contingency. So I guess 9k6 is the nominal and 1k2 is currently used until everything is checked OK.
I’m not sure about SatNOGS observations, but I guess that now we’ll get the same .ogg file regardless of the baudrate (in the past, 1k2 signals weren’t placed at 12kHz). In that case then it’s OK to change the transmitter, but we should keep in mind that it will probably suddenly change to 9k6.
Team was really specific even on Twitter that they will be using 9k6. And since we were the first to pick up the signal, I doubt that they changed it. So: the shipped it knowing that it will be on 1k2 to start with. Why mislead people? I am at loss.
I’m guessing (but just guessing) that 9k6 will be the default mode throughout the mission, and 1k2 is only at launch until it’s changed manually by the team. Why not mention this? Maybe the person Tweeting and filling the info in the DB doesn’t know this detail, or maybe they thought it’s unimportant.
In my opinion it is crucial to correctly inform people of the mode during launch and early operations. Otherwise you might lose valuable data that these people could have collected.
So as said, maybe they forgot, or is some kind of miscommunication/language barrier.
Another hypothesis is that it was configured to use 9k6 but some setting has reset to a default/failsafe unexpectedly.
Scheduling has been done for the next 24h.
Only MEZNSAT is received until now. About its baud rate, I’ve created an new transmitter for 1k2 baudrate and move to inactive the one with the 9k6 baudrate, all future observations has been changed to use the new transmitter.
On the TLE front, it seems that preliminary TLE set of SALSAT fits well MEZNSAT signal, so we expect to fit well the rest of the satellites too. We are going to have more results from strf observations tomorrow that may help us to generate better TLE sets.
