Two Amateur Radio Cubesats Lost

Two Amateur radio cubesats were lost when the Falcon-1 rocket failed shortly after take off on Sunday.

The pioneering cubesats Presat and NanoSail-D were to have operated in the Amateur Satellite Service 70cm allocation.

They were both onboard the SpaceX Falcon-1 rocket that launched from the Reagan Test Site on Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of Marshall Islands at 0334 UT on Sunday August 3rd.

Unfortunately the flight ended a couple of minutes later when a problem occurred with stage separation.

In a statement SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, also founder of PayPal and the Zip2 Corporation, said:

"The most important message I'd like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six."

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX http://www.spacex.com/

Message from Elon Musk http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

BBC News - SpaceX launch http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7539780.stm

PreSat and NanoSail-D CubeSats http://www.southgatearc.org/news/june2008/
new_cubesats.htm

IARU Frequency co-ordination information for PreSat http://www.amsat.org.uk/iaru/formal_detail.asp
?serial=120

IARU Frequency co-ordination information for NanoSail-D http://www.amsat.org.uk/iaru/finished_detail.asp
?serial=115