On Saturday, August 3 at 1948 UT, the Japanese
HTV-4 cargo vessel was successfully launched to the International Space Station (ISS).
On-board was the Amateur Radio (Ham) TV transmitter and a number of CubeSats carrying amateur radio payloads.
The Japanese space agency JAXA has announced details of four CubeSats on the launch. They will be deployed from the ISS by the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) between October 2013 and March 2014.
The four CubeSats are:
• PicoDragon a 1U CubeSat developed by Vietnam National Satellite Center(VNSC), University of Tokyo, IHI aerospace. CW beacon on 437.250 MHz and 1k2 AFSK AX.25 telemetry on 437.365 MHz
• ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X 1U CubeSats developed by Nanorack, NanoSatisfi. ArduSat-1 437.325 MHz 9k6 MSK CCSDS downlink. ArduSat-X 437.345MHz 9k6 MSK CCSDS downlink.
• TechEdSat-3 a 3U CubeSat developed by NASA Ames Research Center
The main mission of
HamTV is to perform contacts between the astronauts on the ISS and school students, not only by voice, but also by unidirectional video from the ISS to the ground within the ARISS program.
The ESA Columbus module on the ISS will host the 2.4 GHz video transmitting station in addition to the existing 144 MHz FM amateur radio station. This new equipment can broadcast images from the ISS during the school contacts or other pre-recorded video images up to 24 hours a day to allow ground stations tuning.
It is planned to transmit DVB-S signals on 2.4 GHz at either 1.3Msps or 2.3Msps with 10 watts of RF.
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