Credit:SpaceX

Successful Launch and Deployment on November 28

Congratulations to all!

A note from Principal Investigator, Noé Lugaz

3UCubed was successfully deployed around 2:47pm ET/11:47 am PT following the launch of Space-X/Transporter-15 on November 28.

Congratulations to all of you on the major milestone of having a satellite designed and built by the IMAP Student Collaboration launched. We are on Sun-Synchronous orbit at about 515 km.

So far, we haven’t been able to confirm contact with 3UCubed. This could be for a number of reasons from the most benign ones (battery got discharged and takes a few orbits to recharge enough to start nominal operations) to critical ones (the onboard computer is not starting up, battery is not working, etc). As we are one of 140 satellites deployed to a similar orbit, even confirming which one is 3UCubed is not straight-forward!

At this time, we can only make hypotheses about what is happening while we try to contact the satellite each time it passes by Durham and Sonoma State University (2-3 passes in a row between 8:40 and 12 am/pm local time for each station) and since we are broadcasting in amateur band, there is a network of amateur radio enthusiasts and other ground stations that are doing the same across the globe. I am hoping to come back with better news within a few days.

In any case, congratulations again to all of you to have made it possible to launch 3UCubed!