Simplesat 1

Launch data:

Mission details:

• The 52 kg, 0.48m dia, 0.66m high octagonal cylinder Simplesat was developed by NASA-Goddard and will be ejected from a canister as a free-flying satellite to test out GPS attitude control.
• At 1830 UTC on Aug 20, 2001 the Simplesat satellite was ejected from a GAS canister in the cargo bay of the Shuttle. Simplesat has a 0.3m optical telescope and a GPS attitude control system. It is intended to test methods for building cheap astronomical satellites and controlling them from a cheap ground station. As of Aug 25 the ground station was still having teething problems.
• On Oct 27, there has still been no contact with the Simplesat astronomy test satellite and it now seems probable that the satellite failed.