PicoDragon

Spacecraft nº:

Vietnamese spacecraft nº: 5

Launch data: Designation  39413 / 98067DB Launch date  03 Aug 2013 - 19:48 UT Launch site  Tanegashima, YLP-2 Launch vehicle  H-2B-304 Mission  Technology Ejected from ISS  19 Nov 2013 - 12:18 UT Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee  337 x 349 km Eccentricity   Inclination  51.6 deg Period  91.3 min

Description:

• The PicoDragon cubesat is a pico-satellite developed by the Vietnam National Satellite Center (VNSC).
• PicoDragon is a 1U CubeSat project intended to take low resolution Earth images and to test on-board systems.
  It is planning to use two amateur radio downlinks and frequencies for these have been coordinated by the IARU. The 100 mW CW beacon will be on 437.250 MHz and a 1k2 bps AFSK 800 mW AX.25 telemetry downlink on 437.365 MHz. Commands will be uplinked on VHF.
• It was launched on board of HTV 4 to the International Space Station, from where it will be deployed.

Mission details:

• On Nov 19, 2013 a J-SSOD cubesat deployer was retrieved from the Kibo module airlock by the JEM RMS arm and moved to a deployment position; at 1218 UTC it ejected three 1U cubesats - PicoDragon for Vietnam, and two Ardusats for a demonstration of spaceborne Arduino processors for the US company NanoSatisfi.