KickSat-2

Launched together with: Cygnus CRS-10 - CHEFsat2 - KickSat 2 - MYSAT 1

Prime manufacturer	Cornell University
Platform	CubeSat 3U
Operator	Cornell University
Mass at launch	5.5 kg
Dry Mass	kg
Basic shape
Dimension (m)	10 x 10 x 34 cm
Equipment	128 slot deployer for Sprites, 104 Sprites on board
Solar array	Solar cells
Stabilization
Propulsion	None
DC power

Re-entered date:	01 Apr 2019 (.2)
Lifetime:

KickSat-1 is an amateur radio CubeSat technology demonstration mission designed to demonstrate the deployment and operation of prototype Sprite “ChipSats” (femtosatellites) developed at Cornell University by Zac Manchester.
ChipSats like the Sprite represent a disruptive new space technology that will both open space access to hobbyists and students and enable new types of science missions. A significant portion of the KickSat mission has been financed by over 300 individual sponsors through the crowd-source funding website Kickstarter.
The Sprites are a tiny spacecraft that includes power, sensor, and communication systems on a printed circuit board measuring 3.5 by 3.5 cm with a thickness of 2.5 mm and a mass of about 5 grams. It is intended as a general-purpose sensor platform for micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) or other chip-scale sensors with the ability to downlink data to ground stations from LEO.
KickSat is a 3U CubeSat being built to carry and deploy up to 128 Sprites. A 1U avionics bus will provide power, communications, and command and data handling functions. A 2U deployer has been developed to house the Sprites. 128 Sprites could be stacked atop a spring-loaded pusher and secured by a nichrome burn wire system. For the flight, only 104 Sprites were on board. A timer releases the Sprites 16 days after launch, backed up by the command receiver to release the Sprites by command.

On Feb 13, Cygnus made a further series of burns to lower its orbit to only 293 x 306 km, below the ISS, and at 2245 UTC the NRCSD-E ejected KickSat-2, which contains over 100 small 5-gram Sprite chipsats. It is unclear when and if the Sprites will be ejected from Kicksat-2; the Kicksat-2 beacon has been detected but is very weak and it appears its antenna did not deploy correctly.
The Kicksat-2 cubesat, developed by Zac Manchester (Stanford U.) and funded on Kickstarter, deployed at least some of its circa 104 Sprite chipsats on Mar 19, 2019 at 0340 UTC, as the satellite orbited over the eastern Pacific southwest of California. Cees Bassa detected radio signals from some of the Sprites. There are no US satellite catalog entries for them. Their area-to-mass ratio is rather high, so they are strongly affected by drag, and Manchester reports that they are expected to have reentered within a few days.

Sprite′s:

Credit: Cornell University

Ref.: #3(SD558), #7(JR761-763), #14, #newscientist.com - update: 11.12.19