Vega VV16 launch (2020-09-03)

According to https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_chr/lau2020.htm we are expecting a launch of Vega VV16 with many microsatellites and cubesats manifested on board. Within this thread we will update on status and coordinate information digging around them.

As a reminder: satnogs-ops is the repository that we are canonically tracking all operations issues, and we have just created a wiki page that explains the process (WIP) https://wiki.satnogs.org/SatNOGS_Operations_Manual .

Except the swarm satellites we have the following:

To be added in DB

Not to be added in DB

  • Athena
    • Commercial satellite sharing no information. Will not add in DB for now.
  • FSSCat A (3Cat 5A) & FSSCat B (3Cat 5B)
    • Using commercial undisclosed frequencies according to this tweet.
    • Not to be added in DB for now.
  • NAPA 1 (RTAF-SAT 1)
    • Thai Air Force experiment. Not to be added in DB for now.
  • TARS (Kepler 3, IOD 5)
    • Commercial satellite sharing no information. Will not add in DB for now.
  • Tyvak 0171
    • Commercial satellite sharing no information. Will not add in DB for now.
  • DIDO 3
    • Commercial satellite sharing no information. Will not add in DB for now.
  • GHGSat C1 (Iris)
    • Commercial satellite sharing no information. Will not add in DB for now.
  • PICASSO
    • Former QB50 cubesat, not sharing frequency information. Will not add in DB for now.
  • SIMBA

Debated

5 Likes

Looks like this has been bumped again:

No new launch date announced yet.

73
Mark VK5QI

TTU100 information

UHF band radio frequency is 435.45 MHz. Satellite callsign is ES1WS , it sends frames addressed to groundstation with callsign ES1ZW

There is an X-Band transmitted on board, on frequency 10.465 GHz, but it is currently silent, and will remain so for quite a while.

Modulation on UHF is FSK 9600 baud, standard G3RUH encoded AX25 packets. Telemetry data is broadcast periodically by sending a burst of 3 identical AX25 frames, followed by morse transmission on a same frequency using unmodulated carrier. Morse transmissions begin with either “CQ ES1WS B:” or “CQ ES1WS C:” depending on backup radio (B) or main communication module (COM) being used. out of every 3 telemetry broadcasts 2 are made using main COM, one using backup radio. Backup radio normally has much weaker signal, being 100mW transmitted instead of main radio’s 1W.

How to decode telemetry frames

/*
Example of telemetry frame:

8a a6 62 b4 ae 40 60 8a a6 62 ae a6 40 61 03 f0
a0 01 56 05 0a 13 f9 03 f9 fa f9 00 9f b8 00 c6
04 dd 07 53 07 ff 00 00 22 04 07 02 d0 d0 3b 01
46 01 01 02 04 17 02 0c 00 00 0c 00 00 00 4f 00
63 00 00 00

first 16 bytes are AX25 header
then comes 4 byte command header:
a0 01 56 05 : module 10 (supervisor) -> module 0 (groundstation), sequence #1,
frame type 0x0556 from there on to end of frame is command payload, for telemetry
frame it is a sequence of module number,N,data[N] where N is number of bytes in
this chunk. Module numbers are 1 = COM, 2 = ADCS, 4 = EPS (power supply),
10 = supervisor. Some chunks may be missing if the module is turned off or not
responding, the absolute minimum is just the supervisor chunk being present.
The data of each chunk contains telemetry information for that module, the
structure of each is below. In future more fields may be added to the end
of these, and more frame types may be added for the modules that are currently
not sending telemetry

The same data is also sent in morse code using unmodulated carrier. Morse message
begins with “CQ ES1WS B:” or “CQ ES1WS C:”, followed by the telemetry data,
and ends with “:”.

Telemetry data is sent encoded so that 4 bits are sent as one morse character,
instead of using the module+len+data encoding, the module number is sent as one
character, without encoding the leading zero, followed by data bytes. chunks are
separated by “,”. The morse characters used for 16 possible nibble values are

{‘E’, ‘I’, ‘A’, ‘D’, ‘N’, ‘H’, ‘M’, ‘R’,‘S’, ‘U’, ‘B’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘K’, ‘L’, ‘T’};

These letters were experimentally chosen to minimise the morse message transmission
time for typical telemetry frames, for exmaple 0x00 gets sent as “EE” and 0x0f gets
sent as “ET”.

*/

typedef struct PACKED
{
    uint8_t
        u_obc_m,      // main OBC power rail volage, mV
        u_obc_b,      // backup OBC power rail voltage, mV
        u_comx,       // xband transmitter power rail voltage, mV
        u_com,        // UHF radio power rail voltage, mV
        u_adcs,       // ADCS power rail voltage, mV
        u_beacon,     // backup radio power rail voltage, mV
        u_sol,        // solar cell power rail (input to EPS) voltage, mV
        u_bata,       // battery A voltage, mV
        i_obc;        // main OBC consumed current, mA
    uint16_t          // little-endian byte order
        u_radsens1,   // radiation sensor 1 measured voltage, mV
        u_radsens2,   // radiation sensor 2 measured voltage, mV
        u_radref;     // radiation sensor reference measured voltage, mV
    uint8_t
        com_resets,   // COM module power-cycled counter due to unresponsivene
        eps_adcs_checks,  // number of requests sent to EPS and ADCS
        com_comx_checks,  // number of requests sent to COM modules
        obcm_obcb_checks; // number of requests sent to OBC modules
} supervisor_telemetry_t;

// 8-bit voltage and current values are in 20 mV and 20 mA steps, so 
// a value of 250 means 5000 mV/mA
//
// module check counters are 4 bits each,
// (ADCS<<4)|EPS
// (COM<<4)|COMX
// (OBCM<<4)|OBCB  

typedef struct PACKED
{
    uint8_t
        eps_status;   // latest received EPS status in response to keepalive
    uint8_t
        bata_voltage, // battery a voltage
        batb_voltage; // battery b voltage
    uint16_t          // little-endian
        bata_temp,    // battery a temperature in tenths of deg Celsius
        batb_temp;    // battery b temperature in tenths of deg Celsius

} eps_telemetry_t;

// eos_status bits, when set:
// b7 -> deployer error, 
// b6 -> charger B error, 
// b5 -> charger A error, 
// b4 -> power blackout time (10m) counting down, 
// b3 -> bank B empty, 
// b2 -> bank A empty, 
// b1 -> deployment ended (maybe with error), 
// b0 -> backup radio has taken over as main UHF transmitter

typedef struct PACKED
{
    uint8_t
        rssi_floor, // raw values from Si chip
        rssi;
} com_telemetry_t;

// to convert raw values to dBm v=v/2-134

typedef struct PACKED
{
    uint16_t   // little endian
        gyro1, // X direction deg/s
        gyro2, // Y direction deg/s
        gyro3; // Z direction deg/s
    uint16_t   // little endian
        mag1,  // X direction mGs
        mag2,  // Y direction mGs
        mag3;  // Z direction mGs
} adcs_telemetry_t;

// note that due to software error negative values are 
// currently showing as 0
3 Likes

VV16 launch should be Sunday
The confirmation will be given 3h before the launch.
If the launch is postponed again, it will take a lot of time to be ready again because all sats need to be charged, and each team have to send somebody to do it.

Here is an AmicalSAT TLE based on a state vector provided to me by @jujun. Assumes 2020-06-28T01:51:00 launch time.

1 74001U 20999A   20180.14839409  .00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0    03
2 74001  97.4083 254.9751 0002442  66.7128 315.5488 15.10021540    03
2 Likes

The first 5 people who receive a frame from AmicalSat will get a gift. To submit your frame uses the satnogs SIDS or email satellite@adri38.fr

6 Likes

Your description is incomplete.
What is included in that example? All of those C-Structs? Chunk size is 19 bytes while decoding… could you please give some more details!?

1 Like

AX25 payload after the command header bytes, split into chunks:
0a 13 f9 03 f9 fa f9 00 9f b8 00 c6 04 dd 07 53 07 ff 00 00 22
04 07 02 d0 d0 3b 01 46 01
01 02 04 17
02 0c 00 00 0c 00 00 00 4f 00 63 00 00 00

first row is supervisor telemetry, 0x13 bytes, data is as defined in supervisor_telemetry_t strcuture
second row is ADCS telemetry, 7 bytes, structure defined in adcs_telemetry_t
third row is com_telemetry_t
fourth row is eps_telemetry_t

1 Like

Thks for the good format … the TLE on Amsat.fr website miss some space, be carefull !!!

Here is the TLE for the next launch (29 june) :

1 74001U 14999A   20181.14829195  .00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0    08
2 74001  97.4083 254.9750 0002456  34.4284 347.2671 15.09685390    05
1 Like

A new schedule of operations is to be defined. The new target launch date will be communicated at the end of this process, which takes into account weather constraints created by the persistence of high-altitude winds.

For the amateurs there is a nice vizualization from the NOAA permanently collected wind speed data.
It present the data in 8 different layers, from the ground level to the approx 26 km high altitude.
It seems, now the strongest wind speed exists on 250 hPA (appr. 22km) and there are only 47 km/h wind speed over the launch port.

There is no radio amateor experiment on board ÑuSat-6.

New launch date: August 17

1 Like

The new VV16 launch date is 1 september.

5 Likes

Here is the TLE of AmicalSat launched on VV16 :
1 74001U 20500A 20246.14839410 .00000000 00000-0 50000-4 0 05
2 74001 97.4424 319.0247 0002779 53.5911 328.5572 15.10021350 09

1 Like

Now in code form to ensure the formatting is not lost.

1 74001U 20500A   20246.14839410  .00000000  00000-0  50000-4 0    05
2 74001  97.4424 319.0247 0002779  53.5911 328.5572 15.10021350    09
3 Likes

Launch is postponed… so we will need to update TLE when we get the new launch time.

Here is the new TLE :

1 74002U 14900A   20247.14839410  .00000000  00000-0  50000-4 0    04
2 74002  97.4424 320.0103 0002779  53.5911 328.5572 15.10021350    03

Amicalsat

4 Likes

With having new TLE, I have removed some observations that were scheduled with the old ones that were inaccurate.

I have (re-)scheduled observations for the next 12h for the four satellites of this launch that we are going to observe.

NOTICE as we don’t have the final TLE sets, scheduling further in the future has the risk to not track well the satellites. Also make sure when you schedule that you use custom horizon with value 0.

So, for the next 12h we have:
AmicalSat: 217 observations (we are in communication with the team so they will have more observations scheduled)
TTU100: 84 observations @laid are you still involved in this mission? Can you give us more details and check that transmitters are the right ones in DB.
UPMSat-2: 86 observations
TRISAT: 25 (This satellite is not coordinated, but we need to keep track of it for identification reasons)

To station owners, feel free to re-schedule any of the observations above on your stations if you want to track specific satellites but please keep in mind that we need observations of all the satellites in order to match them with the TLE that will be announced.

Updates for the status of this launch and its satellites will be posted here.

PS I’ve just seen that @mast has replied for TTU100 in this thread with details…

1 Like