Tubsat N

Tubsat N [VECTRONIC Aerospace]

TUBSAT-N and Tubsat-N1 are two nanosatellites, which were launched on the 7th of July 1998 as a satellite cluster from a submarine with a Russian Shtil-1 rocket in the Barents Sea. All systems are working well and the satellites are in a excellent overall condition. The satellites were separated in orbit via telecommand. Both satellites were developed at the Technical University of Berlin and the complete project was financed by DLR.

The larger satellite TUBSAT-N has a mass of 8.5 kg. The main dimensions of the satellite is 320 × 320 × 104 mm³.

The satellite contains three different experimental payloads provided by the Technical Univerity of Berlin:

• Reaction wheel performance
• Store and forward communication:
  The store and forward communication payload consists of four independent communication transceivers for store and forward communication with a baudrate of 1200 and 2400 baud. Two transceivers work in the 2 m frequency band, the other two transceivers work in the 70 cm frequency band with FFSK (Fast Frequency Shift Keying) modulation. An additional downlink transmitter with 9600 Baud GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying) modulation is available.

The attitude control of TUBSAT-N consists of two magnetic coils, a magnetometer and a reaction wheel. All attitude control devices are also developments of the Technical University of Berlin. Electrical power is provided by 9 NiCd-battery cells of 5 Ah (SANYO). The battery cells are connected serially and provide an unregulated bus voltage from 9 to 13 V. The batteries are charged by two strings of solar cells with the dimensions 6 &timex; 4 cm²2. Each string consists of 34 cells.

It is used for tracking medium-sized and large mammals, stolen cars and to collect data from autonomous buoys for earth environmental observation. These buoys are located in the northern atlantic ocean and near the canary islands.