By SpaceX Falcon 9 will bring first Philippine university-built CubeSats to the ISS
On August 29, 2021 at 3:14am Eastern Time or at 3:14 PM of August 30, 2021 Philippine time, the Philippines will again set another milestone in it’s space program as the first Philippine university-built CubeSat will be among the CubeSats and other science payloads that will be inside the Dragon Cargo C208 which will be onboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 that will go to the International Space Station for a resupply mission. This is going to be the 23rd mission of SpaceX under its commercial cargo resupply contract with NASA. The original launch date was August 28, 2021 at 3:37am Eastern time however the launch schedule was moved due to weather conditions.
Maya-3 and Maya-4
The Maya-3 and Maya-4 are the Philippines CubeSats that will be brought to the International Space Station before its launch to space for its own mission. These CubeSats are similar in form with a difference in their mission. The Maya-4 will have among its missions a demonstration of Near Infrared Camera using a repurposed RGB camera module.
Missions of Maya-3 and Maya-4
- Demonstration of image and video capture of RGB Camera using a 5MP commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) RGB camera.
- Demonstration of Near-Infrared camera (NIR) – a repurposed RGB camera module, for Maya-4 cube satellite.
- COTS Automatic Packet Reporting System – Digipeater (APRS-DP) payload on cubesat for technology demonstration. APRS-DP provides a digital message relay service to the amateur radio community by means of an onboard APRS digipeater. The APRS digipeater will receive from and digipeat an APRS message/packet to any licensed ham on footprint with APRS-capable handheld or station radio.
- Demonstration of ground data acquisition using Store and Forward (S&F) capability of the cubesat. This allows the collection of data from remote ground sensors such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc., stores them onboard, and downloads them to STeP-UP ground stations.
- Detection of and protection from Single Event Latch-up (SEL) due to space radiation.
- Demonstration of a COTS Global Positioning System (GPS) module.
- Magnetic field measurement in space using an Anisotropic Magnetoresistance Sensor (AMR-MM).
The Maya CubeSat technical specs
| Class | Cube Satellite (CubeSat) |
|---|---|
| Weight | 1.15kg |
| Type | Technology Demostration |
| Dimensions | 10cm × 10cm × 11.35cm (Stowed State) |
| Orbit | Low Earth |
| Payloads | Maya-3: RGB Camera, Automatic Packet Reporting System Message Digipeater (APRS-DP) Payload, Global Positioning System (GPS) Chip, Anisotropic Magnetoresistance Sensor Maya-4: RGB Camera, Near-Infrared (NIR) Camera, Automatic Packet Reporting System Message Digipeater (APRS-DP) Payload, Global Positioning System (GPS) Chip, Anisotropic Magnetoresistance Sensor |
The Maya-3 and Maya-4 are the first satellites developed by the first batch of scholars under the Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation, and Advancement (STAMINA4Space) Program: Project 3 – Space Science and Technology Proliferation through University Partnerships (STeP-UP). This project is funded and supported by the DOST. The STeP-UP program is being implemented by the University of the Philippines-Diliman in collaboration with the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan.
Sources:
Watch NASA Live Launch
STAMINA4Space
