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Visiting the KSat team and playing with their re-entry capsule!

A project log for The Distributed Ground Station Network

tracking CubeSats faster, anywhere and anytime for everybody!

hornighornig 04/06/2016 at 22:520 Comments

We had been at the University of Stuttgart and visiting the KSat team. They are building this little fellow. It is a capsule that will be deployed from a high sounding rocket and performing rentry demonstration for the real mission.

The real mission is a cubesat in low earth orbit (about 400-600 km above ground) also having its own capsule that will re-entry even faster through the atmosphere and performing measurements. Then, the white side (heat shield) is in fligh direction and protecting it from high temperatures due to air and plasma friction.

With DGSN, we want to help them find their capsule when it is landing. Andof course tracking it during reentry. For that, we recorded the beacon signal transmitted by the small antennas pointing out of the grey glue. The signal you can see below is a simple on of key of constant wave form. In short, it is like morse code, but slower and without the code.

We should be able to track it!

PS: The capsule already flew with the REXUS sounding rocket and had been ejected and performed the reentry. Congratz, team KSat!

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