Amateur radio operators - help track the FASTRAC satellites

The FASTRAC Amateur Radio satellites built by university students are scheduled to launch from Kodiak, Alaska, on Saturday, Nov 20 at 02:24 UT. KE5DDG and KE5FKV have requested the help of the Amateur Radio community in tracking them.

The two FASTRAC satellites will have packet radio AX.25 beacons on 437.345 MHz and 145.825 MHz FM.

On the AMSAT bulletin board KE5DDG and KE5FKV write:

As many of you may know, the FASTRAC satellites built by students at UT-Austin will be launched as part of the STP-S26 mission this upcoming Friday Nov 19th (around 4:30 pm AST) from Kodiak, Alaska on board a Minotaur IV rocket.

The satellites will be placed into a 650 km altitude, 72 degree inclination circular orbit.

For those that don't know, the FASTRAC satellites are the winners of the University Nanosat-3 Competiton and their primary mission is to demonstrate enabling technologies for small satellites.

The satellites have been designed so that amateur radio operators can track them all over the world and, to do so, the team has built a section on our website
http://fastrac.ae.utexas.edu/for_radio_operators/
overview.php , that allows any amateur radio operator to upload data they receive from the satellites. This serves two purposes which are that the website will parse and graphically interpret the data received and also allows the team to collect data from all over the world.

With this in mind we would like to invite you to track our satellites and register on our website. All of the information to track the satellites is available on the above website where we will be posting the most up to date TLEs as they become available as well as any other pertinent information.

Also, we will be posting updates as the launch approaches on our website, our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/fastracsats and our Twitter page http://www.twitter.com/fastracsats/ so make sure to chek them out.

Thank you for your help. 73,

Glenn Lightsey, KE5DDG and
Sebastián Muñoz, KE5FKV

FASTRAC Principal Investigator and FASTRAC Student Program Manager

According to http://dtusat.dtu.dk/index.php?id=121 the launch vehicle will carry six satellites into orbit five of them carrying Amateur Radio payloads.

- FASTSAT HSV 01
- O/OREOS (Organism/ORganic Exposure to Orbital Stress) 3U Cubesat - 437.305MHz
- Falconsat 5
- RAX (Radio Aurora Explorer) 3U Cubesat 437,505 MHz (not CW, i.e. not suited for audible tracking)
- Nanosail D2 3U Cubesat 0,5 sec beacon every 5 sec on 437.270 MHz.

Mission runs on primary batteries hence mission duration is short (70-100 days to re-entry).

- FASTRAC-A -B Formation satellite, i.e. a satellite pair

FASTRAC A "Sara Lily" Beacon: 437.345 MHz FM AX.25 1200bps

FASTRAC B "Emma" Beacon: 145.825 MHz FM AX.25 1200bps

STP-S26 FASTRAC satellites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STP-S26

Video of FATRAC satellites Presentation

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