SumbandilaSat making progress

SA Amsat reports that the ground control station is making good progress in checking out the various systems on the satellite.

Radio Amateurs will still have to wait some time before the amateur payload will be activated.

Paterson AFB in USA informed the SunSpace team that they had incorrectly labelled SumbandilaSat as Fregat-IRIS.
They are part of the radar tracking network responsible for uniquely identifying over 20 000 objects in Earth orbit!

The team has up to Thursday last week been tracking the Fregat-Iris (35 867) instead of SumbandilaSat (35 870).

After correcting the TLE information, communication with the satellite is more consistent and reliable which should speed up the activation process.

The elements and up to date information is regularly posted on www.amsatsa.org.za.