UNITEC 1 (Shin'en)

UNITEC 1 [UNISEC]

The UNITEC 1 (UNISEC Technology Experiment Carrier), also named Shin'en, was a satellite (or “an artificial planet” as it escapeed the Earth gravitational field) built by UNISEC, a collaboration between several Japanese universities. It was launched into Venus transfer orbit by H-2A-202 launch vehicle with the main payload of Planet-C Venus orbiter developed by JAXA on May 2010. It has the following engineering missions:

1. Onboard computers developed by several universities will be tested in the harsh space environment in the form of a competition; i. e., the computer which can survive to the last in the radiation-rich deep space environment will win the competition.
2. Technologies to receive and decode very weak and low bit rate signal coming from deep space will be developed and experimented.
3. Technologies to estimate orbit and signal Doppler shift of the satellite based on the received RF signal will be developed and experimented. These technologies are essential for tracking and receiving signals from a satellite in deep space.

UNITEC-1 carried communication equipment working in the 5.8 GHz amateur bands. The transmission output was about 15 W.

UNITEC-1 has been developed by 20 universities of UNISEC (University Space Engineering Consortium), which is Japanese university community developing nano-satellites.

Contact with the spacecraft was established after launch, but was lost shortly after.