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

1. Demonstration of image and video capture of RGB Camera using a 5MP commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) RGB camera.
2. Demonstration of Near-Infrared camera (NIR) – a repurposed RGB camera module, for Maya-4 cube satellite.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Detection of and protection from Single Event Latch-up (SEL) due to space radiation.
6. Demonstration of a COTS Global Positioning System (GPS) module.
7. 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